Somerset House Studios, a space supporting artists and creative collaboration in the heart of the capital, announces AGM, an annual night of cross-disciplinary performance and installation.
The evening brings together performances by artists Florence Peake and Eve Stainton, Nina Davies, Violet Savage, Adam Christensen and Sunun alongside work from residents Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom, Harun Morrison, Imran Perretta and Noah Bador, plus DJs John T. Gast, i-sha and Studios artist felix taylor. AGM returns with a programme spanning movement, music, installation and poetry in a constellation of stagings across two floors of Somerset House’s New Wing.
A cycle of performances will unfold, relay and overlap in the ground floor’s River Rooms. Three ongoing bodies of work form new iterations within the space, each exploring process through live improvisation and repetition.
Florence Peake and Eve Stainton share the collaborative movement work Practice 1. This durational performance will see the multi-disciplinary artists slowly navigate the three chambers of the River Rooms whilst interlocked at the crotch. Exploring the boundaries of the stage and the audience’s attention, the work unfolds as a negotiation-in-progress between the artists’ bodies and the space. Through intimate, indeterminate movements between these long-term collaborators, Practice 1 reflects on connection, commitment and futility.
Harun Morrison presents a series of live readings throughout the evening, exploring non-words. These linguistic tools are used by speech therapists to gauge aspects of language acquisition. The artist and writer expands on work currently on display in the G31 Dono exhibition – also open throughout the evening – alongside work by Appau Jnr Boakye-Yiadom.
An opposing stage faces out to Morrison’s performers from across the interconnecting spaces of the River Rooms. Boakye-Yiadomtransposes Dono’s sculptural work Completely Different Events into live performance, inviting Bristol-based producer and selectorSunun to remix the installation’s original sound, manipulating the audio through improvisatory editing to produce an entirely new iteration. Concealed from view, Bokeh Versions’ dub experimentalist will perform to AGM’s audience obscured by a series of translucent pink panels. By withholding physical and visual access to the performer, Boakye-Yiadom foregrounds the listening experience, blurring the hierarchical line between audience and act. Visitors will collectively tune into the work’s exact moment of production, witnessing its sonic architecture constructed in real-time.
Audiences will be given late-night access to the adjoining Lancaster Rooms for Imran Perretta’s large-scale installation, A Riot In Three Acts. Evolved from the artists’ own experience of the 2011 riots, the exhibition takes the form of an expansive film set and spatialised cinematic score. The new work positions visitors centre stage to reflect on the narratives of urban spaces, shaped by social inequality and racial violence.
Elsewhere on the ground floor, another set of performances will emerge in the introspective space of G30. Multidisciplinary artistAdam Christensen will give a dramatic, musical and spoken recitation. Through his signature accordion playing and restless, affecting vocals, Christensen collages and inflates personal experiences into moments of high melodrama, at once ruminative and comedic. Performing as his alter ego Madame de Dangé Laïm, the artist draws audiences into a dark, intimate realm, a precarious shadow of his own private life.
Christensen will share the G30 space with filmmaker and artist Noah Bador, whose work is similarly concerned with the poetics of the everyday. Bador will present re:TR/EAD, an immersive performance imagining spaces of sanctuary and the potential to find quiet amidst the noise of the city. His vulnerable, emotionally charged spoken word draws on personal connections and experiences of urban life. An assemblage of tensions, re:TR/EADincorporates ambient sound, collaged moving images and punctuated moments of collaboration with dancer Violet Savage.
Further movement work will be presented by artist Nina Davieswho shares a series of four dances, roaming throughout the building. The pieces include a slow-motion walk popularised on TikTok, a glitch and pause movement referencing the mannequin challenge, an enactment of the non-playable characters found in video games, and a viral routine mimicking video-edited acceleration. Blending speculative critique with humour, these performances are reimagined and presented as traditional dances of the future, born from the impacts of automation, surveillance and data control. Untethered from a single stage, Davies’ characters move freely among AGM’s crowd, unclear at times whether they are performers or glitching audience members.
AGM unlocks the building’s mid-basement level, usually closed to the public. Audiences can descend New Wing’s staircase from the ground floor for DJs John T. Gast (5 GATE TEMPLE) and Strange Brew regular i-sha, alongside an experimental live mix from Studios resident felix taylor.
Get your tickets here.
Practice 1 by Eve Stainton and Florence Peake, Photo Credit: Helen Turner