A rectangle crop of an artwork by Majed Aslam. It shows lots of soft hues of pink, blue, green and yellow intermingling.
Music
Somerset House Studios

AGM 2021

Thu 14 Oct 2021
19.00 - 23.00
£15

Please note, this is an 18+ event. To enter the event arrive at Somerset House's New Wing entrance, Lancaster Place, off Waterloo Bridge.

New Wing
& St Mary Le Strand

Celebrating five years of supporting boundary pushing creative talent, Somerset House Studios opens its doors for the first large-scale event since the pandemic with AGM.

Since its inception in 2016, Somerset House Studios has welcomed 116 artists as residents, with an additional 12 undertaking short term residencies from Finland, Germany, Canada, Peru, Mexico and beyond. The theme this year will celebrate the return of community, after over a year of displacement and isolation due to the pandemic. 

For the first time, AGM will partner with neighbours St Mary Le Strand, located across the newly-pedestrianised Strand Aldwych. The Baroque church will host performances of ‘Latent Joy’, a new music collaboration within the Studios community, led by artists Paul Purgas and Vivienne Griffin, featuring Flora Yin-Wong, rkss, Joe Namy, Nik Nak and Annie Goh.

Back in the Lancaster Rooms within Somerset House, fashion designer, choreographer and Studios' resident Saul Nash presents a new improvised movement piece that explores themes of freedom and liberation, soundtracked by special guest cktrl, and a live set from the defiantly experimental Lisbon producer DJ Nigga Fox. Plus, Studios resident Marija Bozinovska Jones goes b2b with Sommé Farris for an experimental fusion of Arabic disco, South African Gqom, footwork and Detroit techno. 

In the River Rooms, the QTIBPOC led sound system and Turner Prize 2021 nominees, Black Obsidian Sound System, present ‘Sound as Meditation’ with sets from Evan Abiola, DJ Dae, Tobi and DJ Gin

There will also be a late opening of the current Gallery 31 exhibition Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise, as well as a one-off installation of Assembly 2020, presenting the five spatial sound commissions from Loraine JamesKelman DuranZadie Xa, Ben Vince and Lafawndah, in collaboration with resident sound studio Call & Response.
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Please note this is an 18+ event. 

AGM is a multi-room event with artists performing across different spaces throughout the night. Access to any given space will be on a first come first served basis. 

Schedule

  ST MARY LE STRAND
19.30-20.00   Latent Joy (first performance)
20.30-21.00   Latent Joy (second performance)
   
  LANCASTER ROOMS
20.00-20.45   Saul Nash with soundtrack by cktrl
20.45-22.00   Marija Bozinovska Jones b2b Sommé Farris (DJ set)
22.00-23.00   DJ Nigga Fox (Live)
   
  RIVER ROOMS
19.00-23.00   Black Obsidian Sound System
   
  G18
19.00-22.00   Assembly 2020
   
  GALLERY 31
19.00-22.00   Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise

 

Artists

Black Obsidian Sound System

Black Obsidian Sound System was established in the summer of 2018 with the intention of bringing together a community of queer, trans and non-binary black and people of colour involved in art, sound and radical activism. Following in the legacies of sound system culture they wanted to learn, build and sustain a resource for our collective struggles. The system, based in London, is available to use or rent by community groups and others with the purpose of amplifying and connecting them.

*BOSS will have high risk performers in the space so please keep your masks on unless there are limited people in the space.

Latent Joy

For this year's AGM Somerset House Studios have commissioned a new ensemble performance for St Mary Le Strand. Developed by residents Vivienne Griffin and Paul Purgas, they have created a graphic score that will be responded to by a group of artists and musicians from Somerset House Studios and beyond. 

 

Saul Nash

Saul Nash creates contemporary technical garments that are designed for the liberation of movement. Grounded in the ethos of community, he works with a cast of dancers who invigorate an essence of family whilst delving deeper into exploring the relationship between performance and technical menswear. An understanding of the complexities and subtleties of masculinity are informed by Nash’s background as a self-taught dancer and choreographer growing up in London.

Marija Bozinovska Jones b2b Sommé Farris 

Marija Bozinovska Jones (MBJ) works across audiovisual formats, installation, ephemeral mediums and in live context. Her works revolve around technological amplification and cryptic ways of forging subjectivity. Often mapping biochemical onto algorithmic components, she probes notions of selfhood from subatomic level to networked presence on planetary scale and beyond. For AGM 2021, will play a DJ set, b2b with up-and-coming Sommé Farris. The two will create an experimental fusion of Arabic disco, South African Gqom, footwork and Detroit techno.

DJ Nigga Fox

With his O Meu Estilo debut release in 2013, DJ Nigga Fox (real name: Rogério Brandão) crashed the gates as part of Lisbon's Príncipe Discos crew who have been showing an exciting youth and sonic culture nurtured out of the Portuguese capital urban and suburban areas into a EU widespread diaspora. His follow up entitled Noite e Dia had Resident Advisor praising "the four tracks [of the EP] are so bizarre and delirious they're almost intimidating, and yet they're exuberant in a way that could liberate dance floors.

In late 2019 Príncipe published his supreme 'Cartas na Manga'. Beyond notions of history and African culture in Portugal and Europe, how it breathes and transforms that which is still from the streets, what the algorithm rules and the state legislates, his is a work that is the fruit of his genuine gesture as a composer and producer, renewing time and time again the pleasure of free crossbreeding rhythm & sound.

Latent Joy is developed by Paul Purgas and Vivienne Griffin for Somerset House Studios and St Mary Le Strand, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.