Performance

Future Fantasies: Intimacy and Fiction

Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy

Book tickets

Thu 30 Jan 2025

18.45 - 20.30

£8/£6 concessions

Lancaster Room

New Wing

Part of Somerset House Studios

As digital platforms become more accessible, expressions of intimacy and desire are gaining new visibility and agency online. Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy's second event explores how technology is transforming the erotic and how fiction can empower individuals while challenging enduring stigmas.

The evening will begin with a performative reading of Guinea Pig by artist Sophie Cundale, who will then be joined in conversation with SWARM collective and author Helen Hester. A screening of Shu Lea Cheang's Virus Becoming will conclude the event.

PROGRAMME

18:45: Doors

19:00: Performance: Guinea Pig by Sophie Cundale

19:20: In conversation with SWARM collective and artist Sophie Cundale chaired by author Helen Hester

20:20: Screening: Virus Becoming by Shu Lea Cheang

About

Sophie Cundale

Sophie Cundale is a multi-disciplinary artist based in London currently writing her first novel, an erotic science fiction about toxicity and desire. Recent work has been published with Castello di Rivoli, Turin in 2024/23. Her first major solo show opened at South London Gallery and Bonington Gallery in 2020, with a large scale film work commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella. A body of sculptural work was exhibited at Kapp Kapp Gallery, Philadelphia in a duo show with Penny Goring in 2021. Previous work has been commissioned by Serpentine Galleries; and shown at Temporary Gallery, Cologne, Spike Island, Bristol, Govett-Brewster Gallery, New Zealand, Catalyst Arts, AMINI festival, Belfast, VCD festival, Beijing, Chisenhale Gallery, London and Innsbruck Biennale, Austria; and hosted on vdrome.org.

SWARM

SWARM is a sex worker led collective based in the UK. The project was founded in 2009 (under our former name Sex Worker Open University) to advocate for the rights of everyone who sells sexual services. Our goal is to build a diverse and inclusive community of sex workers who work together to improve our working conditions and resist violence.

Helen Hester

Helen Hester is Professor of Gender, Technology and Cultural Politics at the University of West London. Her research interests include technofeminism, social reproduction, and theories of work, and she's a member of the international working group Laboria Cuboniks. Her books include Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (SUNY Press, 2014), Xenofeminism (Polity, 2018), and After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Times (Verso, 2023, with Nick Srnicek). Her next book, Post-Work: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How We Get There will be out next year (Bloomsbury, with Will Stronge).

Shu Lea Cheang

Shu Lea Cheang is an artist and filmmaker who engages in genre bending gender hacking art practices. She drafts sci-fi narratives in her film scenario and artwork imagination. She builds social interface with transgressive plots and open network that permits public participation. Celebrated as a net art pioneer with BRANDON (1998 - 99), the first web art commissioned and collected by Guggenheim Museum, New York, Cheang represented Taiwan with mixed media installation, 3x3x6, at Venice Biennale 2019. Crafting her own genre of Scifi New Queer Cinema, she has made 4 feature films, FRESH KILL(1994), I.K.U. (2000), FLUIDø (2017) and UKI (2023). In 2024, she received the LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Award. In early 2025, she presented a theatre performance Hagay Dreaming at Tate Modern and an exhibition KI$$ KI$$ at Haus der Kunst in Munich.