Channel is Somerset House’s new curated online space for art, ideas and the artistic process.
- Christine Sun Kim’s specially designed flag A Song About Family to be raised above Somerset House’s courtyard in May
- Rashaad Newsome presents Hand Performance, a new commission for online platform Channel, developed during his three-month residency at Somerset House Studios this summer
- Screening of Hand Performance and in-conversation with Rashaad Newsome announced for 13 June
- Cultural programming studio (A)WAKE to curate a one-day programme of workshops, discussions and performances on 17th June
- In Autumn, Somerset House Studios resident Sonya Dyer will present a dramatic new work across the River Rooms, forming the final stage of her ongoing Andromeda trilogy.
- New residents joining the Somerset House Studios community include: Jenkin Van Zyl, Sian Fan
Christine Sun Kim | A Song About Family | Above Somerset House courtyard until 21 May 2023
Multidisciplinary artist Christine Sun Kim’s flag titled ‘A Song About Family’ will fly above the Somerset Courtyard for the remainder of her exhibition Edges of Sign Language at Gallery 31. The flag is an emblem of her family’s co-creation and time spent on her residency on-site in collaboration with Somerset House Studios and Goethe-Institut.
The flag originates from Kim’s recent publication DRAW A BLANK – DRAW BLANK, a book containing a collection of 54 musical staves each populated by her peers and family. Kim taught her 5-year-old daughter Roux to create scores, the result leading to her daughter contributing musical notes and symbols to A Song About Family. The flag is reflective of their shared art practice, the beauty and challenge of family co-creation, and of their support for fellow artist families.
Commissioned by Somerset House in collaboration with Goethe-Institut London.
Rashaad Newsome: Somerset House Studios Residency | Summer 2023
Rashaad Newsome joins the Somerset House Studios community on a residency this Summer. Newsome is an American artist working at the intersection of assemblage, technology, sculpture, video, music, and performance. Newsome's work celebrates and abstracts Black and Queer contributions to the art canon, resulting in innovative and inclusive forms of culture and media. During the residency, Rashaad will focus on creating a new digital commission titled Hand Performance, which will be presented in June 2023 on Channel, Somerset House’s new curated online platform for art, ideas, and the creative process.
Supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.
New commission on Channel: Hand Performance by Rashaad Newsome | June 2023
Hand Performance takes its title from the well-known element of vogue fem, highlighting a dancer's ability to tell a story with their hands and showcasing their musicality. Hand Performance continues Rashaad's exploration of mapping Black cultural production as a form of movement research, data storage, and collective wayfinding.
Working with a team of Black Queer ASL interpreters, various vogue fem performers, flex dancers, and motion capture technologists, Newsome translates his original poetry into a movement dataset exhibiting the uniquely Black and Queer aspects of sign language. Newsome then integrates this movement into Being the Digital Griot, a non-binary Artificial Intelligence Newsome premiered in 2022. In the film, Being moves seamlessly from signing the poetry to communicating through dance that defies what the human body can do all to an energetic glitching score. The film decentres ableism and privileges the Deaf and Hard of Hearing to make the power and morphosyntactic features embedded in Black Queer vernacular visible.
Commissioned by Somerset House with support from ArtCentre, Pasadena.
Join Rashaad Newsome for the premiere of Hand Performance, as he shares the ideas and process behind the new commission. Newsome will speak on the ways in which racially marginalised identities are creating space, and the act and importance of self-authorship for those historically erased or written into oppression. The screening will be followed by an in-conversation with the artist.
(A)WAKE have been invited to curate a one-day programme of workshops, discussions, and performances that explore the social, political, and cultural impacts of technology on multi-layered identities. Technology is not neutral and often reproduces power structures, such as Eurocentric beauty paradigms, NFTs, and crypto with defaults in the English language, and digital algorithmic systems that support oppression. (A)WAKE seeks to dismantle inequality and build resilience, taking into account the unique challenges faced by the West Asian and North African diasporic communities, such as navigating war-torn landscapes and censorship of Arabic languages within technologies. The programme will feature artistic examples of alternative ways to reclaim narratives of oppression in a playful, yet critical manner. Full programme TBA.
Curated by (A)WAKE with support of Romy Gad el Rab.
Sonya Dyer | 28 Sep – 12 Nov 2023 | 10.00-18.00 daily | River Rooms | FREE
This Autumn, Sonya Dyer will form the final stage of her Andromeda trilogy, part of her project Hailing Frequencies Open, across the River Rooms. This is Sonya’s ground-breaking and ongoing body of work which reimagines the history and radical potentiality of human space travel, exploring the intersections between scientific enquiry, the stories of Black women of history and mythology, and ongoing conversations around monumentalism and memory.
Developed during her time as a Somerset House Studios resident, this installation features Dyer’s complex fusion of moving image, performance and sculpture, incorporating movement, sound and lighting to conjure a speculative conduit between the Andromeda Galaxy and Earth. By expanding her world-building to incorporate the notion of Dark Fecundity - reproduction through darkness - Sonya presents a dramatic new work that brings the project into the final phase of the trilogy.
Commissioned by Somerset House. Generously supported by Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and The London Community Foundation, and developed from original research supported as part of the King’s College London x Somerset House Studios Programme.
New Somerset House Studios Residents
Somerset House Studios welcome artists Jenkin van Zyl and Sian Fan as new residents.
Jenkin Van Zyl is a London-based multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker who makes hallucinant, narrative installations that orbit around fantastical countercultural communities: ghouls breeding cakes in aircrafts, latex inflatables hazed in a desert fortress, and rats competing in dance marathons.
Chinese-British interdisciplinary artist Sian Fan explores mixed identities and the human experience in the digital age through choreography and technology. She works across mediums, combining the physical and the virtual through sculpture, performance, animation, moving image and virtual & augmented reality.
ABOUT SOMERSET HOUSE STUDIOS
Somerset House Studios is an experimental workspace in the centre of London connecting artists, makers and thinkers with audiences. Located inside the repurposed former Inland Revenue building, the Studios offer space and support to artists pushing bold ideas, engaging with urgent issues and pioneering new technologies. It is also a platform for the development of new creative projects and collaborations. Up to 70 artists are resident at any one time and are supported to develop their practice for a defined period.
ABOUT SOMERSET HOUSE
Step Inside, Think Outside
As the home of cultural innovators, Somerset House is a site of origination, with a cultural programme offering alternative perspectives on the biggest issues of our time. We are a place of joy and discovery, where everyone is invited to Step Inside and Think Outside.
From our historic site in the heart of London, we work globally across art, creativity, business, and non-profit, nurturing new talent, methods and technologies. Our resident community of creative enterprises, arts organisations, artists and makers, makes us a centre of ideas, with most of our programme home-grown.
We sit at the meeting point of artistic and social innovation, bringing worlds and minds together to create surprising and often magical results. Our spirit of constant curiosity and counter perspective is integral to our history and key to our future.
Artists biographies HERE
Assets HERE
For more information, please contact Isis O’Regan - isis@tsf-pr.com
For general Somerset House queries, please contact press@somersethouse.org.uk