“We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones”: An Interview with Omoregie Osakpolor

By Carl Terver

Nigerian photographer and filmmaker Omoregie Osakpolor is an intelligent and brilliant artist, mostly because he defies convention, taking his camera lens to unexplored terrain. Even when he approaches a familiar subject, he does so with the intention of renewing our vision and ways of seeing. In 2020, his documentary Nation Forgotten on the plight of neglected Nigerian pensioners received critical praise and in 2021 was a finalist at the Art X Prize. 

In another courageous project We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones, Osakpolor decided with a new and different idea using Extended Reality (XR), as a first-of-its-kind production. In this work, he tells the story of Nigerian families from Edo State who have lost loved ones to irregular migration, oftentimes having not heard from the migrated family member or loved one for over a decade. This time working with a large team, which was a “learning curve for him,” Osakpolor says: Jason Stapleton as technical director, Ifeoluwa Osunkoya as unity developer, 3D character artist Wokocha Arthur Nduka, Paschal Buzo as animator, and Gavan Eckhart working on sound. It won the IDFA DocLab Forum Award in 2022, and premiered from March 10-12 this year at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival in Texas, US. 

How was your experience working with XR media?

I think it was a quite fascinating and super learning curve for me. Transitioning, you know, to using a new tool for the first time. I was learning as I was working, and it was my first time working with a large team of professionals. So, huge learning curve for me.

For this project, what made you think: this has to be XR and not traditional motion picture? What were you aiming at?

As an artist, I’m so big on experimenting, big on the idea that every story requires different art mediums. One shouldn’t be limited to just one medium, you know. Using XR, the goal was to be able to create an immersive work where my audience connects deeply with the story. If you can do that you’ve achieved your El Dorado. I first started with photography and made some videos, too. But when I began work, I felt something missing. And prior to that time, in 2019, I’d wanted to explore Extended Reality. So I went back to VR [virtual reality] again and said okay, I think this project would be good as an XR piece. 

This was not an experiment then? You thought it through from the beginning?

Yes. At first I wasn’t certain it was going to be a VR or an AR [augmented reality] piece. I tinkered with AR, but after a while, I saw its limitations and opted for VR instead. Because, you know, with AR there’s still a kind of gap between the user or audience and the tool. It’s limiting in the sense that using just a phone or tablet to view the work isn’t immersive enough. That wasn’t the kind of immersiveness I wanted to create. 

Talking about immersiveness, the idea of using a container in this project actually evokes a general sense of captivity for the victims being interviewed talking about their loved ones. So it is for the audience, too. Was this part of your plan? 

Yes, that was intentional. The piece is a combination of VR and installation art, including photographs and a physical 40 ft recycled shipping container. To experience it, you basically enter the physical container, you go into it and put on a headset. It is a deliberate play on design to put your mind there, immerse you, yea? Also, the confinement of the container represents for me the mind of the grieving families. 

It also connects to the idea of migration by sea, too.

Yes, it’s doing two things. It’s like a representation of the mind of a grieving person, which are the families back home. A lot of times some of these migrants actually, willingly, go into spaces like containers or a truck just to get to the other side of the world. So those are two things I was playing with: the idea of confinement and, of course, the movement of the migrant themselves.

You explore topics that deal with the neglected or forgotten. For example, your past project Nation Forgotten, about unpaid Nigerian pensioners. What informs this vision of you looking into neglected spaces?

I feel that’s my life. It’s difficult for me to . . . I’m not that artist that creates things that are not my life, that I’m not connected to. I don’t create for the sake of art or for beauty. I’ve never been that and I don’t think I will be that. So for every work I create it’s something I’m deeply connected to. And most times I’m either the primary or secondary victim. That’s basically what informs what I do. My work for me starts from the personal, then to the communal. It’s a private thing, and then I share it because there are others going through the same thing.

Photo from a screening of “We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones” at the South by Southwest Film Festival.

In the case of We Speak Their Names in Hushed Tones, what kind of victim are you: communal or secondary? I know you’re from Benin, right?

If you do a Google search on irregular migration in Nigeria or West Africa, Edo State pretty pops up more than any other place. This means this is something I’m very familiar with, I’m from Edo. (It doesn’t exclude the fact that migration is a general malaise in other places, you know.) I have family members, cousins we haven’t heard of. Actual people inspired the project. I’ve had to watch my aunt restructure her life around the absence of my cousin Jeremiah who left unfortunately without informing her, and at some point lost touch with everyone. She believes he is alive and will come back someday. And she has spent money consulting spiritualists, pastors, native doctors, all sorts. There are hundreds of families like my aunt’s. 

The day this project actually pitched me I was in Benin in an Uber; this was in 2021. A radio programme was discussing how pastors prey on the grief of these families. The Edo State government has a law that you’ll be prosecuted if you aid your child to travel abroad through irregular routes. But the problem is that some of these intending migrants hide their plans from their families. So what such laws do is that they actually prevent families to seek a legal way to look for their missing relatives. This is one reason I felt this projected needed to be done: To bring attention to the mental health of affected families who can’t openly come out, for fear of persecution and stigmatization. They’re grieving alone, not knowing there are others like them. There is need for that law to be reviewed for fairness, rather than being a tool to maim grieving families. Additionally, I feel the need for an initiative to bring these families together and create a support group that’d give them a kind of psychosocial support.

Bottom line is there is a neglect of the mental health of victims. 

Yes.

On a personal level, why is this project important to you?

I’ve made mention of my cousin already. But also, there are friends I grew up with, who I can’t remember when last I saw them because of this crisis. Their mothers still hope they are somewhere and will come home someday. It’s really just about a silently grieving community where I’m from.

An XR still from the documentary.

It’s kind of your own way of coping with the situation, I guess.

Yes. And I feel helpless too. I really can’t do anything for them, so this is like my own way of contributing to see if there’s a possibility for attention to this crisis, for not just our government, right? Because the policies we make in Nigeria, to a large extent, do not actually have a huge impact on the problem. The major problem lies with the EU and its policies. It’s a policy problem we have to tackle. 

How long did it take to see the project through? 

About three years. But it had been on my mind a long while.

That’s from the ideation till its completion?

No, from execution, not from ideation. Just execution alone. I’m a slow artist.

What was challenging about it? 

The VR part especially, when we started. It was an area I was exploring for the first time, and working on a game engine came with its own peculiar technical challenges. Learning to direct in that space was different. In 2D, like traditional filmmaking, the director catches the attention of the audience in a very straightforward way. It is where he points the camera that the audience looks at, what they must see. Directing in VR is totally different.

The audience decides where they want to look. 

Yes. So how do you insert elements to make sure they see? It’s a challenging task which involves spending time and money. And how do you make sure that time and money don’t go to waste? So you have to learn to direct for 360 spaces. I was doing a lot things for the first time: learning and creating special sound, creating the 3D environment, and bringing in elements to direct audience’s attention so that they end up seeing what you intend without the medium being a barrier between them and the story. That’s key in VR: you need to create an experience that is seamless, not one that becomes an impediment for the audience to relate with or connect to the story. If not, you lose them. And if you lose them, you’ve lost the purpose of having created an immersive piece in the first place.

Given another opportunity, would you like to work with XR again, given the cost and time it consumes to complete one project? 

I think I’m basically spending the next part of my life creating XR pieces. I just opened a studio with a friend where we’ll be creating XR content. Stories, games, and books, using XR tools. Like AR books, AR games, VR games, VR films. We are going to create a subscription-based web app and, of course, create original stories. There’ll be works created for consumers, and then what I create for myself too. 

How does it feel going to the South by Southwest Film Festival in Texas, does it feel like arrival?

I don’t know if it’s a curse or a good thing. But there’s one thing I do: as I’m working on a particular project like this, alright, I’m already thinking of the next thing to do. It’s a good pat on the back. It’s alright to get into new spaces and for your work to be recognised. But there’s always still more to be done. South by Southwest is one of the biggest art spaces. Many filmmakers get to have a world premiere of their works at the festival, so it’s big getting there; a huge one for me and the team, that we are doing something really good. For me, however, the work now is to focus on how I’m going to take the project back home and push for the things it was created for in the first place. There’s an impact strategy plan where we are going to have meetings with people back home. And, hopefully, with some policymakers in the EU, as time goes on. That’s where the bulk of the work is for me. The artwork becomes like a mediating tool for us where we go into negotiation spaces and have conversations.

Carl Terver has a BA English from BSU, Makurdi, and writes about film, literature, and music. His work has been published in The Republic, The Stockholm Review, Goethe-Institut Nigeria, Olongo Africa, and Afapinen, where he is the Founding Editor.