Somerset House Studios

Highlights from ~> RADIO ASSEMBLY, broadcast from Somerset House Studios with artist shows, discussions, sonic explorations and music from ASSEMBLY and beyond. In November 2018, Somerset House Studios presented the inaugural ASSEMBLY with five days of sound and performance extolling the best in contemporary electronic and experimental music and the makers behind it. Bringing together Studios artists, international talent and forward-thinking audiences, ASSEMBLY’s multi-disciplinary programme presented newly commissioned works alongside several first performances and UK premieres. Listen back to the full selection of shows ~> www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/assembly/radio-assembly Produced by Reduced Listening for Somerset House Studios.

Somerset House Studios resident Jacob Samuel, one half of Album Corp, talks bots, Oasis and recent projects including If You Die in Roblox You Die IRL, and making music with musician/saxophonist Ben Vince.  Recorded earlier in the summer Jacob Samuel introduces the concept underpinning the work If You Die in Roblox You Die IRL, an adaptive audio/visual installation by Album Corp presented at the exhibition Complex Value$. With visuals and text by Jacob Samuel and music by Klein, the virtual world constructs and dissembles itself according to the statistics created by live birth and death rates. Based on online gaming environments and on what is left over by these when they cease to be used.  Album Corp is a collaboration between South London based artist Klein and musician Jacob Samuel. Their practice explores sounds, the movement within sisterhood and the idea of vulnerability with youth.

Somerset House Studios resident Gaika talks to Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar about the politics of sound system culture, Windrush and SYSTEM, a month-long audio visual installation, exploring themes of immigration, cultural expression and raw technical prowess which is at the heart of sound system culture through archival source material, commissioned by Boiler Room. SYSTEM at Somerset House Studios until 26 August www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/system-by-gaika BIOGRAPHIES Ash Sarkar is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer living in London. She is a Senior Editor at Novara Media, where her work focuses on race, gender, class and power. As part of her work, she has appeared on numerous panels, hosted live events, and interviewed frontbench politicians on everything from foreign policy to football opinions. Ash supports Tottenham Hotspur, and has never knowingly kissed a Tory. Gaika is a multidisciplinary recording and visual artist, working across genres and platforms to create compelling

Introducing Somerset House Studios residents OOMK (One of my Kind), an art publishing collective run by Sofia Niazi, Rose Nordin and Heiba Lamara. Founded in 2016, the trio publishes a biannual zine focussed on women, art and activism and curate and programme publishing events exploring the role of arts in social practice, alternative education and centring marginalised voices through print. In July 2018, OOMK co-curate PROCESS!, a new two-day print publishing festival interrogating the making of independent media.

London-based musician Nabihah Iqbal joined Imran Perretta for the second event in the Listening Party series. Curated by Somerset House Studios resident Imran Perretta, the series brings together an array of artists and musicians, each exploring the unique sonic and visual cultures that underpin their practice. The artists will explore their deepest cuts, from music videos obsessions to unreleased album tracks, each meditating on the influences that have shaped their identity and their creative output.  Many musicians like to speak of versatility, but Nabihah has better grounds than most. She boasts an MPhil (focused on African history) from Cambridge, experience working in human rights law and a black belt in Karate. Formerly known as Throwing Shade, she’s ditched that moniker to embrace the name she was born with. Readying her debut album for Ninja Tune, “Weighing of the Heart” it’s a big statement in two ways: first, because she’s taken her real name to stand proudly as a female British Asian artists ma

Episode 3 of ‘Open Your Palm, Feel the Dust Settling There’ - a new three-part audio work by artist and Savage Messiah author Laura Grace Ford, generated by psychogeographic walks – drifts – through the Latimer Road, Hammersmith and White City areas of West London. Ford lives in a social housing block where concerns persist about the safety of cladding. Post-Grenfell, narratives were imposed and voices were excluded. Drifts through living rooms, abandoned buildings, and back rooms of pubs allow stories to proliferate from a network of hidden interiors; walking becomes a political strategy, a way of engaging with the collective intensities held in the fabric of a place. From this process of tuning into these collective channels, Grenfell Tower emerges as a dominant thread in the spatial narratives uncovered on these walks. This series is a mapping of the repercussions and tremors radiating from this moment; most audible in the nomadic and transient zones, Wormwood Scrubs, Hammersmith Hospital, the spaces und

‘Open Your Palm, Feel the Dust Settling There’ - a new three-part audio work by artist and Savage Messiah author Laura Grace Ford, generated by psychogeographic walks – drifts – through the Latimer Road, Hammersmith and White City areas of West London. The series reconnects Ford with the counter-narratives of Latimer Road by walking with a personal network of squatters, activists and soundsystems, as well as friends made during a decade of public sector work in the area. In 2005, Ford captured the affective currents of the Latimer Road area in her zine Savage Messiah where she connected with flashpoints of counter-cultural intensity. The new work is both a lament and the channelling of an incendiary pulse, it is a retracing of steps, a map of warnings left unheeded. Laura will present a live audio visual performance of the work on 27 June at Somerset House Studios.  https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/open-your-palm-feel-dust-settling-there

A new three-part audio work by artist and Savage Messiah author Laura Grace Ford, generated by psychogeographic walks – drifts – through the Latimer Road, Hammersmith and White City areas of West London. Comprised of a conflation of spoken text and sound collage, Open Your Palm is an audio work responding to the psychic and emotional contours of the city. Made from field recordings and fragments of found music, the spectral sectors of the city permeate its three episodes. The channelling of voices based on real encounters allows for an intersubjective relationship with the terrain, an approach to sound and text as a form of psychic ventriloquy.  Laura will present a live audio visual performance of the work on 27 June at Somerset House Studios.  https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/open-your-palm-feel-dust-settling-there

Ewa Justka is a polish electronic artist, instrument builder and electronics teacher based in London. As part of a residency with Music Hackspace she has run a series of workshops on DIY synth design, prototyping and PCB which culminated with a live event co-curated with EVOL. This podcast explores her residency though interviews with Ewa, Music Hackspace, and course participants. This is the first in a series of 3 month residencies by Music Hackspace in which Artists are encouraged to explore their ideas, creative practice, and to develop their skills through connecting with and contributing to the Music Hackspace community. From 2017 to mid 2019, Music Hackspace is a resident of Somerset House Studios and over this time holds a studio space in the Studio’s vaults. Music Hackspace is a platform for experimenting and interacting with sound and technology. It incorporates diverse methodologies and aim to create an open playground and exchange of ideas and sounds that embraces new and old technologies.

A new series delving into the influences of British-South Asian artists. Curated and hosted by Imran Perretta. For the first event, Imran was in conversation Paul Purgas, a multidisciplinary artist working with sound, performance and installation. Paul is also one half of Emptyset, a London/Berlin based production project formed in 2005 with James Ginzburg. The Listening Party series brings together an array of artists and musicians, each exploring the unique sonic and visual cultures that underpin their practice. In conversation with Somerset House Studios resident, Imran Perretta, the artists will explore their deepest cuts, from music videos obsessions to unreleased album tracks, each meditating on the influences that have shaped their identity and their creative output. Next up: Nabihah Iqbal on 25 May.

Associate Artist Jennifer Walshe presents her project Aisteach, the fictional Avant-Garde Archive of Ireland. Recorded during the 2018 edition of Sonic Acts Academy, Amsterdam where Walche was performing and screening the film An Gléacht alongside Mario de Vega. Historical Documents of the Irish Avant-Garde is a fictional history of the musical avant-garde in Ireland which spans 187 years, and is housed at aisteach.org, the website of the Aisteach Foundation, a fictional organisation which purports to be ”The Avant-Garde Archive of Ireland.” For the project, Walshe engaged a huge team of collaborators and created compositions, recordings, scores, articles and ephemera. An Gléacht Outsider artist Caoimhín Breathnach (1934–2009) lived as a recluse in the Irish village of Knockvicar for all of his life. Breathnach’s artistic practice focussed on the creation of ‘subliminal’ tapes and films, which he believed possessed the capacity to shift consciousness. In these works, Ogham magickal scales, crystallography,

Studios artist Marija Bozinovska Jones and musician and artist J.G. Biberkopf introduce a collaborative new work entitled Fascia 171208180222\. The live audio-visual performance positions the contemporary self entangled in surveillance economies with data as an elusive currency. The interview was recorded at this year's Sonic Acts Academy in Amsterdam where the work was premiered. Marija Bozinovska Jones’ work revolves around formation of identity within augmented technocapitalism. She examines implications of new technologies and how society adapts to them, contemplating coping mechanisms. Via MBJ Wetware as a hybrid identity, Marija initiates collaborative live performances, simulating immersive heterotopian landscapes to be collectively inhabited. Her festival performances include commissions for CTM/ Deutschlandradio Kultur, a performance at Vorspiel and presentations at Transmediale and MIRA/Scope Sessions. Her past musical collaborators include JG Biberkopf, Iydes, A Guy Called Gerald and Mind:Bod

Snooker is the most intensely psychological sport. A one-on-one battle of nerves, where the course of history can be determined by a single ball, potted or missed. Many assume the sport to be slow and repetitive. But behind the bowties and waistcoats lurks turbulence and controversial characters. Snooker is a game of contradictions and juxtapositions like no other. In general the game rewards consistency and risk aversion. However, it is rife with individuals who go against the grain. In this podcast Studios resident, member of Common Study, film-maker and snooker player, Louis-Jack, discusses his latest work in progress. Hurricane looks back at the tumultuous life of Alex Higgins, one of the sports most loved and controversial characters, through the lens of the modern understandings of mental Health. Louis-Jack explores the psychological aspects of snooker and suggests that a consideration of this can support people generally with mental health in daily life. The interview was recorded in the Snook

Eloise Hawser presents Anabasis to Dora, a programme of multi-site visits based on research into unusual and contested spaces, museums and collections around the UK. The series formed the background to her current exhibition By the deep, by the mark at Somerset House, until 22 April. The podcast follows Eloise on an Anabasis to Dora tour exploring London’s infrastructure with a bus trip to Beckton sewage treatment works and Crossness via Thamesmead. These waste disposal and transport sites form the functional backbone of the city, interconnected by largely unseen subterranean systems, moving fluids, waste and data around in a constant, necessary flow. Beckton marks the confluence of London’s northern and southern outfall sewers. The 260-acre site has been home to a treatment works for a century, and displays a rare array of different architectural tropes in its myriad buildings and structures. It also plays host to wildlife, a collection of Brutalist incinerators, a cylindrical pond, and all with an une

Somerset House Studio’s resident Beatrice Dillon presents Taut Line, a multi-channel sound installation co-commissioned in partnership with Abandon Normal Devices. The piece premiered at The Great Cave, Peak Cavern Derbyshire in September as part of the AND 2017 festival programme. At Somerset House, Dillon reconfigured the work for The Deadhouse, a rarely accessible underground tunnel running beneath the courtyard, clad with headstones dating from the 1600s, the remnants of a chapel that was formally located on the site. Image: Anne Tetzlaff Podcast produced by Jo Barratt for Somerset House Studios.