Sounds from Beneath, Part 3 from XENON: an exploded opera

“When Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil invited Célio Turino to develop a programme to democratise access to culture, no one could have imagined the extraordinary initiatives that today cross Brazil from one extreme to the other: from semi-arid sertão to the sea, from Amazônia to the fertile lowlands of the South. The Ponto de Cultura programme has provided instruments for the multiple voices of a diverse nation to find expression in music, literature, petry… Turino’s book is a map of living Brazilian Popular Culture, disseminated to every corner of a nation that is finally seeking to be a country for everyone.” -Emir Sader

Documents the work of fourteen performance artists who marked the personal and political resonances of the new Millennium in a series of site-specific actions. Contrasting with the epic, populist and homogenising nature of the official celebrations, these works focused on forgotten and ephemeral experiences, enacting small but significant interventions in the public sphere.

In this short book, the leading German cultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen puts forward a fresh and original account of pop music. He argues that pop music is not so much a form of music as a constellation of different media channels, social spaces and behavioural systems, of which music is only a part. Its own logic of attraction is based less on compositions and the expression of subjectivity and more on indexicality, real or psuedo-involunatary effects as recorded by sound technologies, and on studio discipline and staging, and hence on performance.

By elaborating his innovative account of pop music as a constellation, Diederichsen develops a theory that distinguishes itself from sociology, cultural studies, media studies and ethnography, while at the same time drawing on and encompassing them all.

Video documentation of an artist conversation with Sahera Khan on 1st March 2024 at The Garrett Centre. This conversation followed screening of Sahera’s film My Glow as part of our LADA Screens programme on Voice, Care and Healing. Following the screening Sahera engaged in a Q&A with the audience and gave a short BSL lesson.

In My Glow (2023), Aa mature, Deaf, Muslim, British Sign Language (BSL) mother shares her pregnancy journey through the pandemic, and how she coped with limited communication with others such as the health service.

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Video documentation of an artist conversation with Lucy Sheen on 28th June 2024 at The Garrett Centre. This conversation followed screening of Lucy’s film Abandoned, Adopted Here as part of our LADA Screens programme on Voice, Care and Healing. Following the screening Lucy gave a performative reading of the poem I Know This Face, followed by a panel on the complexities of post-pandemic working in cultural and performative spaces for British East and Southeast Asians. With Jennifer Lim (Chair), Rosa Fong, Lucy Sheen, and Moi Tran.

Abandoned Adopted Here explores the nature of belonging in the British society and the unheard, silenced, and often erased voices of British East and Southeast Asians with mixed heritages and complex identities.

This is a video file. For a version with closed captions, visit our vimeo channel

Video documentation of an artist conversation with Lateisha Davine Lovelace-Hanson, on 26th APril, 2024 at The Garrett Centre. This conversation followed a screening of Lateisha’s film The Gift as part of our LADA Screens programme on Voice, Care and Healing. Lateisha was  joined by collaborators Kes Gill-Martin and Ava Riby-Williams for a discussion and interactive sonic/music offerings.

The Gift (2022) is a single-take style short film, weaving together performance for camera, original sound composition and poetic storytelling that fuses speculative fiction and autobiography. We are invited into the artist’s home, to witness them playfully uncover (and reclaim) stories of grief, body, love, nature and home-making.

This is a video file. For a version with closed captions, visit our vimeo channel

Contemporary Theatre Review, Volume 31 Issue Number 4 November 2021

Fauxthentication – Art, Academia, Authorship (or the site-specifics of the Academic Artist) investigates the means of production of the art that can be created within the boundaries of artistic research.

On Filipina labour and amateur performance in Hong Kong.

Performance Research On Amateurs pg 81-87, Volume 25. No 1 January/ February 2020.

This book is packed with thoughtful exercises distilled from twenty-five years of interdisciplinary artist workshops and teaching devising and performance making at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. Created and curated by Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, artists who work internationally at the interface of academia and professional practice, this collection provides exercises for devising, composing, and editing original works.

An edited volume that explores the work of the innovative, experimental and internationally acclaimed performance artist Marilyn Arsem, with 200 images.

Audio of the artist in discussion with Jospeh Morgan Scholfield. Event held on 13 February 2020.