As part of Ilona Sagar's Soft Addictions works for Gallery 31's third season Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise, visitors are encouraged to listen to Sagar's looped sound work within the gallery space as an accompaniment to her print and text pieces.   Soft Addictions is a generative series of works that analyze the interface between people and computers and the science of responsive design through sound, digital imagery, performance and text. Using gesture and inference the work abstracts the alternating lines between function and dysfunction as a bodily state, playing with the paradigms of power between technology and the body. Voice and sound acts as both a dislocation and a connecting element within the series, working with the scales of speech, from the bureaucratic and instructional to the emotionally intimate and physical. Device culture has now made the human body evermore remote and co-dependent on technology. Pioneering advances in user-driven technologies threaten to shift our social interactions from one of collective interests to networks of individual desires. Ergonomic syntax, both scientific and fleshy, fuels Soft Addictions with its idiosyncratic logic and vivid output.  Mix: Doug Haywood Male voice: Shaun French Female voice: Penelope McGhie --- Curated by Stella Sideli and featuring work by Josiane M.H. Pozi, Majed Aslam, Ilona Sagar and Col Self with Farvash and vvxxii (Sp0re), Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise explores the notion of the body as an archive; as a record of collective stories, experiences, and memories. The exhibition runs 1 Jul - 31 Oct 2021. Gallery 31 is a permanent exhibition space dedicated to profiling the Somerset House Studios community and work developed through our residencies. With a rolling programme and a different theme each season, Gallery 31 presents a curated selection of new commissions alongside existing and in-progress works.  

Somerset House Studios

Ilona Sagar: Soft Addictions | Gallery 31: Create, Capture, Organise, Pluralise

Shenece Oretha takes an experimental approach to the podcast format for Somerset House Studios’ Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy series.   The multidisciplinary artist choreographs a DJ lecture mix that explores the theme of the body, using sonic forms that range from instruments and speech, to musicians, conductors, and listeners.  Oretha journeys through improvisational musical practices, audience culture, Black literature and emotional responses, layering music, speech and sound.  Listen as Oretha composes this sonic terrain, and bear witness to sound’s ability to move us emotionally, physically and socially, connecting us even when we are apart.   ABOUT THE ARTIST Shenece Oretha is a London based artist who interrogates the emotional, physical and relational sonic material of Blackness. In sharp contrast to the stark technological hardware often present in her installations, her work builds on the mobilising effects of Black oral traditions, celebrating the exchange and participation of intimate action, testimonials and emotional responses to generate expressions of collective imagination.   She has exhibited and performed her work both nationally and internationally. Recently her work ‘ Called to Respond’ was shown at Cell project space in 2020. Her first solo exhibition, TESTING GROUNDS, curated by Taylor Le Melle, was presented with Not/Nowhere at Cafe Oto, London (2019). Group exhibitions include 'Cinders, Sinuous and Supple', curated by Deborah Joyce Holman, Lausanne Les Urbaines, Switzerland (2019); 'PRAISE N PAY IT/ PULL UP, COME INTO THE RISE', South London Gallery, London; and 'BBZBLKBK: Alternative Grad Show', Copeland (both 2018). Presentations of performance work include 'Towards a black testimony', Stroom Den Haag curated by Languid Hands (2019); Wysing Polyphonic Festival, Wysing Art Centre, Cambridge (2018);'Congregation', ICA, London, (2017). 

8: Shenece Oretha: Listening Wholes | Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy

A new artist-led podcast from Timur Si-Qin exploring how our health is intimately tied to the health of the natural world, as part of Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy. Drawing from religious history, contrasting western and Indigenous cultural relationships with nature, and the desired shift towards a spirituality of symbiosis, artist Timur Si-Qin unpacks the ideas at the centre of his upcoming essay Heaven Is Sick as well as New Peace - Si-Qin’s artwork, brand and ‘protocol’ developed in the wake of climate change. Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy is a dynamic programme of new commissions, films, workshops, and conversations considering both our individual health and collective wellbeing by exploring societal and ecological issues that affect both people and planet.   About the artist Artist Timur Si-Qin’s interests in contemporary philosophy, the evolution of culture, and the dynamics of cognition take form in branded ecosystems and installations of 3D printed sculptures, light-boxes, and VR.  Si-Qin’s works seek to think beyond the anthropocentric dualisms at the centre of western consciousness. Si-Qin’s long term project is the proposal of a new secular faith in the face of climate change called New Peace. Drawing from disparate disciplines like the Anthropology of Religion, Marketing Psychology, and Object Oriented Ontology, Si-Qin understands spiritualities as cultural softwares capable of deep behavioral and political intervention. New Peace is thus a new protocol for the necessary renegotiation of our conceptual and spiritual relationship with the non-human. New Peace is an artwork, a brand, a sect, and self propagating memetic machine.  Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy is kindly supported by the Adonyeva Foundation.Music featured:Oliver Barrett - Solo Cello (Live at Cafe OTO) Anthony Pateras & Vilerio Tricoli - Solo (Revox)A Paranoid Android - Walking Blind in New YorkMystified - Mystic SteamKM Krebs - EtorpasleEli Keszler - Solo - Live at Cafe OTO (Sat 25 May 2013)

7: Timur Si-Qin | Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy

Defrag was a series of talks curated by Jake Charles Rees for Somerset House Studios between 2017-2019, exploring how technology is changing the world we live in, including the way we produce and consume art and culture. This podcast revisits the live recordings in the form of an audio montage, meshing together a range of fragmented thoughts from guest speakers. It delves into the practices of the people using and critiquing some of the latest technologies and how these shape and augment our realities. Contributors Silkie Carlo, Big Brother Watch  Anne Duffau Bill Posters Libby Heaney  Shannen SP Kode9 Keiken  Elliot Burns, Offsite Project Raffaella Moreira, Multimedia Anthropology Lab Sophie Dyer of Airwars Hanna Rullman of Airwars Milena Marin, Amnesty International  Gabriela Ivens of WITNESS  Adbulwahab Tahhan James Stringer, Werkflow  The White Pube Charlotte Webb, Feminist Internet  Travis Alabanza  Seyi Akiwowo  Helen Brewer, Feminist Internet Clara Finnigan, Feminist Internet Caroline Sinders Rhiannon Williams, Feminist Internet Natalie Khan Commissioned and produced by Somerset House Studios Curated by Jake Charles Rees Podcast produced by Huw Thomas Sound design by Harry Murdoch and Huw Thomas

6: Defrag - Technology in Culture and Society

An hour long segment of reflections and music from Beatrice Dillon alongside the artists she invited to contribute to AGM – DeForrest Brown, Jr., Rian Treanor and Sarra Wild. Somerset House Studios celebrated four years of its dynamic resident artist community with the first online edition of its annual building takeover series AGM. Featuring performances broadcast live from Somerset House, as well as from across the UK and beyond, AGM 2020 premiered five new commissions from a specially curated line-up of artists and writers, including Aida Amoako, DeForrest Brown, Jr., Josiane M.H Pozi, Rian Treanor, Tyreis Holder, plus a performance from Sarra Wild; a line-up selected by a panel of existing and alumni resident artists: Beatrice Dillon, Jesse Darling, Klein and Larry Achiampong.  

5: AGM 2020 | Beatrice Dillon, Rian Treanor, Deforrest Brown, Jr. & Sarra Wild

Part of Mutant Promise's online series for progressive music-making, including introduction courses to coding and sound software, digital field recording, interior soundscape composition, and remote hardware workshops for DIY synth building at home.  Note: At 30.25 the artist uses the word 'centralised' in place of the intended word 'de-centralised'. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Jessica Ekomane is a French-born and Berlin-based electronic musician and sound artist. Her practice unfolds around live performances and installations. Her quadraphonic performances, characterized by their physical affect, seek a cathartic effect through the interplay of psychoacoustics, the perception of rhythmic structures and the interchange of noise and melody. Her ever-changing and immersive sonic landscapes are grounded in questions such as the relationship between individual perception and collective dynamics or the investigation of listening expectations and their societal roots. One of six composers chosen as collaborators by Natascha Süder Happelman for her installation at the German pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2019, her debut album, Multivocal was released on Important Records in 2019. Her work has been presented in various institutions worldwide such as CTM festival (Berlin), Ars Electronica (Linz), Dommune (Tokyo) or Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha). Annie Goh is an artist and researcher working primarily with sound, space, electronic media and generative processes within their social and cultural contexts. She is a Lecturer in XD Pathway in BA Fine Art at CSM and an Associate Lecturer in Sound Arts at LCC. Her work takes a critical approach to contemporary debates in the fields of digital technologies, media arts, generative and computational processes and communication studies, with a particular focus on sound, intersectional feminism, decolonial theory and the politics of knowledge production.

Jessica Ekomane in conversation with Annie Goh | Mutant Promise

Revisit Open Your Palm, Feel The Dust Settling There, an 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. Originally comprised of three parts, the work is now available as a feature length podcast. 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 across the work. 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. 00.00 Episode 1 14.28 Episode 2 27.41 Episode 3

4: Open Your Palm, Feel The Dust Settling There - Laura Grace Ford

The word ‘climatotherapy’ refers to a type of physical and mental treatment which utilizes the influence of climate on the human body, exemplified by treatments in the Dead Sea or at hot springs. Climatotherapy was an installation presented by Nozomu Matsumoto & Nile Koetting at ASSEMBLY in 2018, comprised of sound, light, smell, ikebana and virtual assistant Alexa is a key component, repurposed to generate live and enunciate various suggestions and tips throughout, what we should do, how we should live.   With these elements in dialogue, the installation became its own microclimate. Populated by household audio technologies, corporate messages weave through musical reproductions to create an ever-changing soundtrack for our relationship with ever-changing technologies. As our preference settings hack, repurpose and adapt our technological world into new causes, these devices become an aesthetic, a physical manifestation of the dialogue between mass industry and human environment. Climatotherapy questions how the human body is conditioned by its environment in the time and space of cloudified body, mind, and information. Part of the Deep Listen, a new series for Somerset House Studios in which we share  long-form audio content, new or archive, featuring interviews, discussions and creative responses to ideas of connection and commonality.  - Nozomu Matsumoto is a Tokyo-based artist and composer. His sound design work includes Nile Koetting’s “Sustainable Hours” at Maison Hermés, Tokyo 2016, and “FUKAMI, une plongée dans l’esthétique japonaise” at Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild, Paris, 2018. Nozomu released his remarkable first vinyl “Climatotherapy” and début for UK based label The Death of Rave, 2018.   Nile Koetting is an artist working across installation, performance, scenography, sound and composition. His work and projects have been presented at Moscow Biennale 2017, ZKM Karlsruhe, Hebbel Am Ufer Theater, Western Front, Mori Art Museum, Maison Hermès Tokyo Fondation d’entreprise Hermès.   Together, Nozomu and Nile are founders of online sound curatorial platform EBM(T), collaborating and presenting works by various artists such as Shana Moulton  Lars Holdhus, aka TCF, Sam Kidel and Robin Mackay. EBM(T) curated a part from the show in “Tokyo Art Meeting VI TOKYO: Sensing the Cultural Magma of the Metropolis” at The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2015, also in 2017 EBM(T) co-curated a music and art festival “INFRA インフラ”  presenting artist’s work in a museum, gallery and clubs in Tokyo. This episode reflects upon a performance installation presented at ASSEMBLY 2018, developed from a release by Nozomu on The Death of Rave. Co-produced with Music Hackspace.

3: Climatotherapy - A virtual listening room by Nozomu Matsumoto & Nile Koetting | Deep Listen

The first in our new Pause series, THE UN-NOW NOW is a new commission by Studios artist Vivienne Griffin. Our programme I Should Be Doing Something Else Right Now takes its title from another of Vivienne’s works.  This sound work is the culmination of a group workshop hosted by the artist in January, exploring dissonance, vocal fry, polyphonic harmonies, speaking in tongues and drone. Working with The Seer on vocals, accordion and electronic noise, Anya Palamartschuk, vocals and cornet and Joshua Fay electronic samples and vocals, Vivienne brings together their contributions in post-production for this collaborative composition. The voiceover lists the 59 slogans of Lojong, a Tibetan Buddhist mind training practice from the 12th century. The original script for the workshop was taken from Dharma Punx NYC; a secular Buddhist podcast by Josh Kordan. Lyrics from songs by Bjork and Madonna and 12 step fellowship addiction recovery acronyms. AA  ACA  CA  CLA  CMA  CoDA COSA  COSLAA DA EA  FA FA  FAA  GA  HA  MA  NA  N/A Nar-Anon NicA  OA  OLGA  PA RA  SA  SAA  SCA  SIA  SLAA  SRA  UA  WA  

2: THE UNNOW NOW | Vivienne Griffin

A performance by Jacob Samuel and Samir Kennedy featuring a collage of interviews with Beatrice Dillon, Coby Sey, Ines Camara, Scott Pattinson, Tadej Vindis and Vanessa Omoregie (Camgirls Project). The piece looks into the existence of infinity in the present moment, the relationship of tech and the image of the body, the future of prophecies between them. Originally performed live for RADIO ASSEMBLY, part of ASSEMBLY in 2018, five days of sound and performance at Somerset House Studios.-Deep Listen is a new series for Somerset House Studios in which we share  long-form audio content, new or archive, featuring interviews, discussions and creative responses to ideas of connection and commonality.  

1: Jacob Samuel's Eternal Life | Deep Listen

 Are you feeling Hyper Functional? Vivienne Griffin, Florence Peake, Rowdy SS & Rebecca Bellantoni respond to the idea of wellness, described as the optimization of mental and physical wellbeing. Time and again we find we cannot measure up to impossible demands, frustrating ourselves. Those who do not or cannot conform to wellness culture risk the contempt of those on its tyrannical treadmill. Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy took place during January and February 2020 at Somerset House Studios with a programme that asked us to reconsider well-being in new and unexpected ways, a refreshing antidote to the vast wellness industry that has fuelled societal pressures to conform, often creating an unrealistic and anxiety-inducing desire to be healthy, happy and productive. UN–NOW is a group workshop by Vivienne Griffin where voices were digitally modified in unison to explore dissonance, vocal fry, polyphonic harmonies, speaking in tongues, drone, noise and fake laughter.  Florence Peake presents CAVE. There is a tidal cave on the Jurassic coast, South West England. It is a site of retreat and refuge from the world for only 3 hours before it is again submerged by the sea. A place of dark, wet sanctuary, the cave has become Peake’s lover.  London is noisy; sirens, drilling, honking, shouting, the endless grind of traffic. The Tube. From stress, to heart disease to type 2 diabetes, research suggests noise pollution creates problems for people's health. For 10 years Rowdy SS has been recording London's damaging noise, in this new work he remixed an archive to create a soundscape for healing.Produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening. Commissioned by Somerset House Studios.

1: Are you Hyper Functional? Artists respond to the idea of wellness | Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy

For ASSEMBLY, Karen Gwyer approached the street noises as drums. Building over the course of the performance, Karen will use and process the ambient sounds to create a multilayer, polyrhythmic piece created from the more punchy and identifiable sounds as well as distorting the general hum. The mood and intensity will shift as the performance progresses. On top of the rhythmic street sounds, layers of synths will build to create a moving yet sobering composition that draws on Karen’s own emotions around her 12 years as a Londoner, both the pain and relief of leaving, and the conflict of looking at it now from afar. Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest; the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invited a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoors inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances. Karen Gwyer was born in the southern US and raised in the north. Now based in Berlin after more than a decade in London, she shifts between pumping, thickly melodic, just left-of-techno dancefloor vibes and diversionary acidic psychedelia in her expansive, largely analogue live electronic performances. To date, she has released a handful of acclaimed recordings on Don’t Be Afraid, Nous Disques, Opal Tapes and Kaleidoscope, among others. She has produced remixes for labels such as InFiné, Software, and Public Information, and has created a number of commissioned pieces for Berlin’s Pop-Kultur festival and Open Music Archive in London. Christian Marclay’s ambitious and accomplished practice explores the juxtaposition between sound, photography, video and sculpture. His installations display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris and Kunsthaus Zurich. More recently, he exhibited The Clock at the Tate Modern (debuted at White Cube in 2010) – an artwork created from thousands of edited fragments, from a vast range of films to create a 24-hour, single-channel video. Podcast produced by Reduced Listening for Somerset House Studios. ASSEMBLY Production by Music Hackspace and sound system by Call & Response, with sound and interaction programming from Black Shuck and Preverbal Studio. Lighting design by KitMapper. ASSEMBLY is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund, The Adonyeva Foundation and the John. S Cohen Foundation.

3: Karen Gwyer ~> ASSEMBLY: Christian Marclay

Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest; the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invited a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoors inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances. Studios resident Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician whose virtual worlds and animated films create alternate versions of real places. For ASSEMBLY he invited collaborators Seth Scott and Robin Simpson to present a site-specific simulation that acts as an uncanny virtual and sonic double of the performance space. Their performance, Doom, reflects the atmosphere during the Extinction Rebellion protests when Waterloo Bridge – which the Lancaster Rooms overlook – was closed to traffic and filled with warning signs of the coming apocalypse. Christian Marclay’s ambitious and accomplished practice explores the juxtaposition between sound, photography, video and sculpture. His installations display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris and Kunsthaus Zurich. More recently, he exhibited The Clock at the Tate Modern (debuted at White Cube in 2010) – an artwork created from thousands of edited fragments, from a vast range of films to create a 24-hour, single-channel video. Podcast produced by Reduced Listening for Somerset House Studios ASSEMBLY Production by Music Hackspace and sound system by Call & Response, with sound and interaction programming from Black Shuck and Preverbal Studio. Lighting design by KitMapper. ASSEMBLY is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund, The Adonyeva Foundation and the John. S Cohen Foundation.

2: Lawrence Lek ~> ASSEMBLY: Christian Marclay

Artist and producer Beatrice Dillon’s new piece for ASSEMBLY, infraordinary, combines installation and performance, in which specially composed sounds are triggered using the system’s Kinect camera, alongside a live controlled sound mix of the street. Inspired by writer Georges Perec’s concept of the ‘infra-ordinary’ - taking account of the micro events of the everyday - the performance attempts to examine and reframe the rhythmic patterns of the street outside. Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest; the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invited a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoors inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances.  Beatrice Dillon is an artist and music producer who has produced solo and collaborative releases across Boomkat Editions, Hessle Audio, The Trilogy Tapes, PAN, Timedance and Where To Now? Recent performances include Barbican Centre, Tokyo’s wwwX, MUTEK Montreal, Dekmantel, Documenta Athens, Cairo’s Masåfåt Festival, Norway’s Insomnia and Documenta Athens. With a background in fine art, Beatrice has produced sound and music commissions for Outlands Network, Lisson Gallery, Études Paris, AND Festival, Somerset House and has collaborated with visual artists and choreographers across ICA, TATE, Southbank Centre, York Mediale, Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, MACVAL Paris, Nasher Center Dallas and Mona Tasmania amongst others. She was the recipient of Wysing Arts Centre’s artist residency, is a resident at Somerset House Studios and presents a show on NTS Radio. Christian Marclay’s ambitious and accomplished practice explores the juxtaposition between sound, photography, video and sculpture. His installations display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris and Kunsthaus Zurich. More recently, he exhibited The Clock at the Tate Modern (debuted at White Cube in 2010) – an artwork created from thousands of edited fragments, from a vast range of films to create a 24-hour, single-channel video. Podcast produced by Reduced Listening for Somerset House Studios ASSEMBLY Production by Music Hackspace and sound system by Call & Response, with sound and interaction programming from Black Shuck and Preverbal Studio. Lighting design by KitMapper. ASSEMBLY is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund, The Adonyeva Foundation and the John. S Cohen Foundation.

1: Beatrice Dillon ~> ASSEMBLY: Christian Marclay

Developed in residence at Somerset House Studios, visual artist Sam Williams (https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/residents/sam-williams-roly-porter) and musician Roly Porter (https://www.instagram.com/rolyporter) present Salvage Rhythms, a collaboration resulting in a performance and film drawing on systems of archaeology, mycelial networks, composting and non-human relationships to explore different possibilities of survival and connection. Sam and Roly will present a newly commissioned film Salvage Rhythms at Somerset House Studios in 2020, which collages together sound and movement from their performance of the same title at AGM (https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/agm) , with original and found footage; animation and photography to create a dense and decaying compost of human and non-human entanglement. Salvage Rhythms features as part of I Should Be Doing Something Else Right Now (https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/gallery-31-i-should-be-doing-something-else-right-now) , the second season at Somerset House Studios' new permanent exhibition space, Gallery 31, from 23 Jan – 31 May 2020. Produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening. Commissioned by Somerset House Studios

2: Salvage Rhythms | Sam Williams and Roly Porter

Somerset House Studios is a new experimental workspace in the centre of London connecting artists, makers and thinkers with audiences. The Studios are a platform for the development of new creative projects and collaboration, promoting work that pushes bold ideas, engages with urgent issues and pioneers new technologies.

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