Goethe-Institut x Somerset House Studios Residency
Somerset House Studios are collaborating with the Goethe-Institut London to establish a new international artist residency programme to support a Germany-based artist working at the intersection of music, art and technology to be in London for a 3-month period. For this inaugural residency, artist, DJ, writer, and performer Juliana Huxtable, one of the most singular voices in the contemporary art world, will join the Somerset House Studios community from April to July 2020.
BEATRICE DILLON: WORKAROUND
10 MARCH | 19.30 – 22.30 | £12.00
Somerset House Studios resident Beatrice Dillon presents Workaround, a live showcase of the artist and musician's much anticipated debut album.
Workaround is the lucidly playful and ambitious solo debut by musician and artist, Beatrice Dillon for PAN.
Dillon presents the premiere of her new record with an evening of live performance and movement joined by guest performers Jamila Johnson-Small (Last Yearz Interesting Negro) and Eve Stainton, alongside a solo percussion set from composer and musician Kuljit Bhamra MBE, as well as DJ sets from TTB (NTS) and Will Bankhead (The Trilogy Tapes).
GROUNDING PRACTICE: JULIANA HUXTABLE
16 APRIL | 18.45 - 20.30 | £8.00
Grounding Practice is a new series of artists talks, exploring the sustainability of artistic practices.
The third event in this series is a talk by multidisciplinary artist Juliana Huxtable.
Traversing both the academic and clubbing scenes, Huxtable is a poet, DJ, musician and visual artist at the helm of trans rights and the electronic music subculture discourse. Founder of SHOCK VALUE, the platform for showcasing trans and womxn artists, she is also the author of the seminal ‘Mucus In My Pineal Gland’, a startling collection of her poetry, performances and essays critiquing gender, sexuality, politics, whiteness, and history.
Grounding Practice seeks to discuss the sustainability of an artist’s practice, their inspiration and how they navigate, negotiate and contribute to the contemporary contexts in which they’re making work all whilst sitting within the art ecosystem that’s tied to a competitive art market.
TIME EATING | With live performances from Aylu, Oliver Coates, and Flora Yin-Wong, and food by Hannah Hammond
18 MARCH | 19.00 – 21.30 | £40.00
Studios Curator in Residence Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura hosts an intimate dinner in The Deadhouse exploring the themes of birth, marriage and death through taste and sound, with a menu by Hannah Hammond (River Cafe).
A feast for belly and brain.
Whether it’s in celebration, resignation, or trepidation, life’s biggest moments are always accompanied by music and food. Time Eating is a sonic and culinary exploration of the themes of births, deaths, and marriages, in a nod to the history of Somerset House itself as the home of the General Register Office. Pull up a chair as we collapse monolithic cultural institutions with a wicked sense of hospitality...
Birth is given to Argentinian musician and producer Aylu, whose sample-based, spectral sound condenses juke down to its barest elements before reconstructing it into something new. Death becomes London-born, Chinese-Malaysian producer Flora Yin-Wong, whose practice combines the sounds of her heritage in a contemporary interpretation of mystique concrete. Then comes Marriage, in a live solo set from cellist, composer and producer Oliver Coates, whose sound pairs pop romanticism with a redefinition of the word ‘classical’.
Hannah Hammond prepares a seasonal, biodynamic, multi-course menu which traverses each of the evening’s themes. As a chef at the Michelin starred River Café, where Italian cuisine sings in a London dialect, she’s developed an appetite for exploring the way different food cultures reinterpret one another. As her own cooking practice is informed by the revealingly feminine language of machismo molecular gastronomy, for Time Eating, she’ll be using Italian futurist cooking as a playful garnish to a menu with the volcanic energy of Sicily at its heart.
Presented by Studios Curator In Residence Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura
Part of We Are All Ancestors: Births, Marriages and Deaths, Somerset House’s site-wide programme reflecting on one of the former uses of Somerset House as the home for the General Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths which left the site 50 years ago following 134 years of being in the building.
THE BODY SERIES: TO THE UNKNOWN
28 MARCH | 16.00 - 21.00 | £8.00
For this edition of The Body Series, A---Z examines the gaze on the ‘other’ and its representation, its definition for new possibilities through sci-fi narratives and alternative technologies.
Curated by Anne Duffau, a cultural producer, researcher, and founder of A---Z, the UNKNOWN will unfold through discussions, performances, and screenings counteracting homogenization and imperialist historicizing – asking how we create a platform to question and defy the norm, what are the options, solutions and human representations we can explore for new possibilities.
With: Murat Adash, Julie Béna, Whiskey Chow, Kate Cooper, Sonya Dyer, Carla Ganis, Agi Haines, Holly Herndon & Jlin (feat. Spawn), Tarek Lakhrissi, Jennifer Martin, Sadé Mica, Sitraka Rakatoniaina, Tai Shani, Purple Velvet (Zoe Marden + Vasiliki Antonopoulou), Su-Hui-Yu
FULL PROGRAMME
16.00 – 16.30: Film Screening
Holly Herndon & Jlin (feat. Spawn)
Sadé Mica
Su-Hui-Yu
Carla Ganis
16.45 – 17.45: Speculative Futures and Bodies Talk
With: Sonya Dyer, Agi Haines, Tai Shani and Sitraka Rakatoniaina. Moderated by Anne Duffau (A---Z)
Each guest speaker will briefly present their practices and recent projects. Followed by a discussion moderated by Anne Duffau around the future of genders & how bodies evolve, exploring what technology, medicine and speculative design can bring to our morphing species.
18.00 – 18.20: Film Screening
Kate Cooper
Tarek Lakhrissi
18.30 – 19.00: Performance
Chinese-born Activist turned Artist and Drag King, Whiskey Chow, will present her newest performance.
19.00 – 19.40: Film Screening
Jennifer Martin
Murat Adash
Julie Béna
19.45 – 20.15: Performance
Purple Velvet collective (Vasiliki Antonopoulou + Zoe Marden) experiments around the idea of the Queer throughout event curation; for the Body Series they create a new live AV performance on the Future Queer.
Throughout: Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden, 1983 will be playing in a loop.
MUTANT PROMISE INAUGURAL PROGRAMME
FROM APRIL
Following the conclusion of Music Hackspace’s residency at Somerset House Studios in 2019, former director Tadeo Lopez-Sendon and producer Harry Murdoch launch new programming and producing platform Mutant Promise to profile and support the work of musicians who combine performance and composition work with a DIY-maker and music education practice.
Taking its title from Adam Harper’s ‘Evolution of Post-Internet Music’, Mutant Promise encapsulates a desire to work with artists who are restless with their medium, whose practice is to continually hack, modify, invent - mutate - the tools and instruments which they're given. The 'promise' is the certainty of the push forward that defines these tools, and how this process shapes new artistic practices in return.
The inaugural programme features workshops, discussions and meetups, beginning with Berlin based composer Jessica Ekomane in April, and later featuring award winning producer and engineer Marta Salogni and ∞OS, an open source operating system for the Bodymind. Full programme to follow.
AMPLIFY DIGITAL ARTS INITIATIVE
29 MAY | 21.00 – 01.00 | £12.00
This May, Somerset House Studios hosts artists from Argentina, Canada and the UK for a week-long residency which will culminate in a public showcase presenting live performances and installations from the cohort as well as other international artists working within music and digital art.
Connecting different cultures and experiences, the AMPLIFY D.A.I explores ways of building confidence and empowering womxn artists in digital arts and electronic music in order to enlighten, embolden and contribute to the current cultural shift around inclusivity and gender issues.
AMPLIFY D.A.I is an initiative developed by the British Council in partnership with MUTEK (Canada/Argentina) and Somerset House Studios (UK). Since 2018, the programme has connected an active network in Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and the UK. Participating artists and full programme TBA.
FULL EVENT LISTINGS:
GALLERY 31: I SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE RIGHT NOW
Maeve Brennan, Vivienne Griffin, rkss and Laura Fox, Rhea Storr, Sam Williams & Roly Porter
G31, New Wing
23 JANUARY 2020 – 31 MAY 2020
Mon, Tue, Sat & Sun 10.00-18.00
Wed - Fri 11.00-20.00
FREE
MARCH
BEATRICE DILLON: WORKAROUND
10 MARCH | 19.30 – 22.30 | £12.00
Somerset House Studios resident Beatrice Dillon presents Workaround, a live showcase of the artist and musician's much anticipated debut album.
TIME EATING
18 MARCH | 19.00 – 21.30 | £40.00
Studios Curator in Residence Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura hosts an intimate dinner in The Deadhouse exploring the themes of birth, marriage and death through taste and sound, with a menu by Hannah Hammond (River Cafe).
THE BODY SERIES: TO THE UNKNOWN
28 MARCH | 16.00 - 21.00 | £8.00
For this edition of The Body Series, A---Z examines the gaze on the ‘other’ and its representation, its definition for new possibilities through sci-fi narratives and alternative technologies.
APRIL
GROUNDING PRACTICE: JULIANA HUXTABLE
16 APRIL | 18.45 - 20.30 | £8.00
Grounding Practice is a new series of artists talks, exploring the sustainability of artistic practices.
MUTANT PROMISE INAUGURAL PROGRAMME
18 APRIL | 10.30 - 18.00 | £50.00 | Introduction to Music and Sound Making with Jessica Ekomane
FURTHER EVENTS TBA
From the minds behind Music Hackspace comes the launch of new platform Mutant Promise to profile and support the work of musicians who combine performance and composition work with a DIY-maker and music education practice.
MAY
AMPLIFY DIGITAL ARTS INITIATIVE
29 MAY | 21.00 – 01.00 | £12.00
Somerset House Studios partners with MUTEK and the British Council for the second edition of AMPLIFY Digital Arts Initiative, a platform for dialogue on access connecting womxn artists and electronic producers working across the digital arts.
FOR PRESS ENQUIRIES, PLEASE CONTACT: press@somersethouse.org.uk/0207 845 4624
ADDITIONAL LISTINGS INFORMATION
Address: Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA
Transport: Underground: Temple, Embankment / Rail: Charing Cross, Waterloo, Blackfriars
Website: www.somersethouse.org.uk
Somerset House Facebook: www.facebook.com/SomersetHouse
Somerset House Twitter: @SomersetHouse
Somerset House Instagram: @SomersetHouse
Somerset House Studios Twitter: @sh_studios_
Somerset House Studios Instagram: @somersethousestudios
ABOUT SOMERSET HOUSE
London’s working arts centre
Somerset House is London’s working arts centre and home to the UK’s largest creative community. Built on historic foundations, we are situated in the very heart of the capital.
Dedicated to backing progress, championing openness, nurturing creativity and empowering ideas, our cultural programme is ambitious in scope. We insist on relevance, but aren’t afraid of irreverence, and are as keen on entertainment as enrichment. We embrace the biggest issues of our times and are committed to oxygenating new work by emerging artists. Where else can you spend an hour ice-skating while listening to a specially commissioned sound piece by a cutting-edge artist?
It is this creative tension—the way we harness our heritage, put the too-often overlooked on our central stage and use our neo-classical backdrop to showcase ground-breaking contemporary culture—that inspires our programme. Old and new, history and disruption, art and entertainment, high-tech and homemade, combined with the fact that we are home to a constantly shape-shifting working creative community: this is our point of difference. It is what we are proud of. And it is what makes the experience of visiting or working in Somerset House inspiring and energizing, urgent and exciting.
