Version city:Small Axe, London and the archive

Small Axe, directed by Steve McQueen for BBC / Amazon Studios, was released in the UK and US over Autumn-Wintser 2021/22. Across ve lms it acknowledges events and records experiences of African Caribbean populations in London during the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with members of the production team and mise-en-scène analysis, our aim is to understand how Small Axe contributes to the production of urban history by drawing upon archives and repurposing a cinematic archive for ture use. It is an example of what Hal Foster calls ‘archival art’. e rst part of our analysis, on poiesis, considers the archival work carried out in the production of Small Axe; the second, on aisthesis, contemplates the anthology’s con guration of a speci c space and its framing of a particular sphere of experience. Our argument is that Small Axe constitutes a ‘versioning’ of London’s post-WWII black history, a recombination of archival elements into a new sensorial archive. e concept of ‘version’ is taken from dub reggae and refers to new takes on, or versions of, pre-wri en and recorded tracks, involving innovative levels of modi cation and creative interpretation and/or translation for new audiences.