It features video diaries captured from a vehicle whilst driving through Lagos, Nigeria. It is overlaid with vibrant triptych paintings that represents bittersweet, tainted nostalgia. One caption is taken from my writing, detailing a telephone conversation with my mother. She reveals how her father was assassinated in 1985. The other captures remnants of conversations. Echoes that become "sonic ruins”, the ghost of image and sound forces the audience into the same fragmented reality the diaspora inhabits. It explores the passive social and physical state of the non-driver. In the diaspora, life and milestone moments like birthdays, weddings and funerals are often mediated through screens, shaped by work demands and broader capitalist structures. Building another home and becoming an outsider in my first one. Much like observing a bustling city go by through the window. I emphasise the effects of colonial trauma and the "imperial boomerang”, where colonial violence returns to dictate the rhythm of modern life in the West. The passenger seat becomes a mirror world that allows for pauses in the safety of the mundane interior. By going against this velocity, the radical act of pausing. Transforming a position of passive displacement into a site of reflection and memory.
Passangering encompasses the social, conversational and physical behaviour of those not driving, a passive role. Living in the diaspora means being away from home a lot, missing birthdays, weddings and sometimes funerals. Simultaneously building another home whilst becoming an outsider in your first one. The busy streets of Lagos are mediated through the windows of the passenger seat, staring at a city you don’t truly feel a part of go by. Similarly, milestone moments with families are mediated through screens, shaped by work demands and broader capitalist structures. Restricting presence and connection, controlling pace and rhythm, the video journal comes in conjunction with the artist's writing, which focuses on much broader ideas around the shock doctrine proposed by Klein. The artist also homes in on the after-effects of colonial trauma and the imperial boomerang proposed by Aimé Césaire (described as “Un choc en Retour” in Discourse on Colonialism), juxtaposed against our modern experience of reality and the world. The capitalist structures that now shape our modern world is the boomerang effect hitting back, the same systems once employed in the colonies now dictating the rhythm of the artist's life in the West. The colonial violence and its eventual return to the “civilised” world, the same brutal techniques eventually migrate back to the heart of the empire. The overlaps of speed and disorientation are the way the empire feeds itself today. The artist emphasises the importance of pausing, passengering is a reminder of moments of pause, a space held where commemoration of memory and pauses in conversation become acceptable. This falls against the backdrop of the speed of Lagos restricted by the barrier of the window, the passenger seat becomes a mirror world that allows for pauses in the safety of the interior. By reclaiming the passenger seat as a site of reflection and memory. The artist transforms a position of passive displacement into a deliberate act of resistance against the velocity of diasporic life, effectively stalling the imperial boomerang through the radical act of a pause.

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