LDN LAB
June 2—7
Protein Studios
31 New Inn Yard
London EC2A 3EY
LDN LAB is a revolutionary laboratory that explores the convergence of art, technology, and physical space, featuring some of the most innovative and influential creators of our time. Reality and surreality, humanity and automation, fine art and pop culture, the physical world and the digital realm, the signal and the noise. It reminds us where we’ve come from, shows us where we are now and considers where we might go next...
LDN LAB is conceived and curated by Alex Poots for SXSW London 2025 and produced by North Star Studio.
In residence…
When you visit LDN LAB, enjoy a drink and take a moment to have a read. Specially for SXSW London, we’re joined by News & Coffee and House of Cans.
10—7 daily










Andy Warhol, Nico [ST238], 1966
16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4.5 minutes at 16 frames per second
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali [ST67], 1966
16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 3.7 minutes at 16 frames per second
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, Donyale Luna [ST195], 1965
16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4.5 minutes at 16 frames per second
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, Lou Reed [ST266], 1966
16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4.4 minutes at 16 frames per second
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, Twist Jim Rosenquist [ST284], 1964
16mm film, black-and-white, silent, 4.5 minutes at 16 frames per second
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground and Nico, 1966
16mm film, black-and-white, sound, 66 minutes
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol, Vinyl, 1965
16mm film, black-and-white, sound, 66 minutes
© The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved.
Film still courtesy The Andy Warhol Museum
Andy Warhol
Warhol’s moving image works are an example of an artist using the technology of his time, in this case film, to extend his artistic practice into areas not always recognized or immediately accepted by the mainstream art world. Warhol recycled, reused and updated his images in paintings, prints and drawings. The film works presented in the primary room appeared in Warhol’s highly influential Exploding Plastic Inevitable (EPI) in a nightclub setting that was further enhanced through the interplay of music and live performances.’
This is the first time that these film elements are installed in London under the supervision of Patrick Moore, former director of The Andy Warhol Museum and cultural advisor to SXSW London.
Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.
Further reading:
From Warhol To Beeple by Patrick MooreEarly Pop paintings were based on comics and ads, with his series of Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962 creating a buzz in the art world that launched Warhol as a celebrity. Throughout his career Warhol continually explored different mediums to create art. In 1963 he began to make films, and created many classics of avant-garde cinema and a body of work known as Screen Tests (4-minute portrait films, from 1964-1966). He broadened his activities into the realm of performance art with a traveling multimedia show called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, which featured the rock and roll band The Velvet Underground.
Portrait commissions became a significant source of output and income for Warhol in the 70s as he mixed further with New York’s high society circles. Whether captured in photographs or paintings, Warhol’s work blurred the lines between artist, socialite, and celebrity with images of Liza Minnelli, Halston, Grace Jones, Mick Jagger, and many others.
In the mid-80s, Warhol collaborated on artworks with young artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. Warhol and Basquiat together produced over 150 collaborative canvases over a four-year period. In the mid-1980s, Warhol expanded into media production, most notably with his television show, Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes airing on MTV.
Warhol died in New York City on February 22, 1987, due to complications following surgery to remove his gall bladder. After Warhol’s death The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was founded to promote the “advancement of visual arts.” The Andy Warhol Museum opened in Pittsburgh in 1994.



Beeple
This artwork reflects the tension between our increasingly fraught relationship with technology and its potential to either heal or harm the planet. The duality between chaos and harmony mirrors the division seen in society, shaped by the reality one chooses to engage with.
Through the lens of social media, we are faced with a stark choice: immediate sensory overload (noise) or a broader, long-term perspective (signal). The former presents an overwhelming deluge of data, media, and perspectives, evoking a world seemingly teetering on the edge of collapse. Yet, when we take a step back and expand our view to the larger temporal horizon, a different narrative emerges - one of human resilience, technological innovation, and a slow but significant move towards a more harmonious existence with nature.
This work allows the viewer to oscillate between these two realities. The dial becomes a metaphor for our own agency and balance that can be found between a wider, more serene holistic view of our world, and the chaotic swirl of real-time news feeds representing the dissonance and implied urgency of the present moment.
This tension explores the question: will you choose a reality where we are heading towards destruction or redemption?
Beeple Studio 2025
This work is the artist’s proof (A.P) of the edition of 1 within the Lingotto Investment Management’s Digital Art Collection.
BIO
Mike Winkelmann, widely known as Beeple, is an American digital artist, graphic designer, and animator celebrated for his innovative and provocative work at the forefront of digital art. Beeple gained international recognition for his daily art project, Everydays, which he began in May 2007 and has continued without interruption. This commitment to creating one new artwork every day has not only demonstrated his relentless creativity but also documented the evolution of his artistic style and engagement with emerging technologies over time.
Beeple’s work spans various media including short films, virtual reality, augmented reality, and NFTs, pushing the boundaries of visual culture in the digital age. He became a household name in 2021 when his NFT artwork Everydays: The First 5000 Days was auctioned at Christie’s for over $69 million—one of the highest prices ever paid for an artwork. His pieces often comment on politics, pop culture, and the societal impacts of technology, blending dystopian visuals with satirical undertones. In the same year, he founded Beeple Studios, a creative hub aimed at supporting the digital art community and fostering public engagement with new forms of art. Through his groundbreaking work, Beeple has become a defining figure in the conversation around digital ownership, crypto art, and the future of creative expression.

MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ, MARINA’S AI ALIAS, HANS ULRICH OBRIST
“THE CONVERSATION…” brings together Marina Abramović, her AI counterpart, and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist in a triangular installation - a dialogue between human artist, artificial voice, and human curator. This work invites the audience to reflect on the nature of these distinct yet intertwined forms, and how they may illuminate and expand one another. By removing the AI’s visual form, the piece reduces it to pure voice - disembodied, immaterial - echoing Abramović’s enduring exploration of presence beyond the limits of the physical body.
The Conversation was created by Hans Ulrich Obrist & Marina Abramović together with Primavera De Filippi, Apolinario Passos and Marco Conti Šikić (members of the Glitch Collective) in partnership with with Tavus, Hugging Face and Alien Intelligence.
Commissioned by SXSWLondon, curated by Alex Poots and produced by North Star Studio.
Hans Ulrich Obrist BIO
Hans Ulrich Obrist (b. 1968, Zurich, Switzerland) is Artistic Director of the Serpentine in London, and Senior Advisor at LUMA Arles. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991 he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Most notable amongst these are the Do It series (1993–), Take Me (I'm Yours) in London (1995), Paris (2015) New York (2016), and Milan (2017); and the Swiss Pavilion at the 14th International Architecture Biennale in Venice (2014). Obrist has also co-curated the Cities on The Move series (1996–2000), Laboratorium (1999); the operatic group exhibition Il Tempo del Postino in Manchester (2007) and Basel (2009), and The 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 Rooms series (2011–2015). Obrist's recent exhibitions include Enzo Mari at Triennale Milano (2020) and WORLDBUILDING at Centre Pompidou Metz (2023) and Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf (2022). The Handwriting Project, which protests the disappearance of handwriting in the digital age, has been taking place on Instagram since 2013 (@hansulrichobrist).
In 2011 Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence, in 2015 he was awarded the International Folkwang Prize, and then most recently in 2025 he received the Prix François Morellet. Obrist has lectured internationally at academic and art institutions, and is contributing editor to several magazines and journals. Obrist’s recent publications include Ways of Curating (2015), The Age of Earthquakes (2015), Lives of the Artists, Lives of Architects (2015), The Extreme Self: Age of You (2021), and 140 Ideas for Planet Earth (2021), Edouard Glissant: Archipelago (2021), James Lovelock: Ever Gaia (2023) Remember to Dream (2023), Une vie in Progress (2023).
Instagram




© Leon Chew, The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst with sub, Serpentine, 2024
© Leon Chew, The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst with sub, Serpentine, 2024
© Leon Chew, The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst with sub, Serpentine, 2024
© Leon Chew, The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst with sub, Serpentine, 2024
© Leon Chew, The Call, Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst with sub, Serpentine, 2024
HOLLY HERNDON & MAT DRYHURST
Co-Designed by Holly Herndon, Mat Dryhurst and sub (led by Niklas Bildstein Zaar with Christopher Blohm, Digital Director); fabrication by The White Wall Company; technical support by Andrew Roberts
This artwork was commissioned and produced by Serpentine as part of Holly Herndon & Mat Dryhurst: The Call, 2024
Data Trust Experiment led by Victoria Ivanova, Jennifer Ding (Data Intermediary), and Eva Jäger with Ruth Waters and Mercedes Bunz. Incubated by the Future Art Ecosystems initiative at Serpentine Arts Technologies. Further research support for data empowerment by the Centre for Data Futures at King’s College London and RadicalxChange. Legal counsel for data empowerment of choir members by AWO and Keystone Law.
UK Choral AI Dataset Participating Choirs
Blackburn People’s Choir, Blackburn
Carnoustie Choir, Carnoustie
Cunninghame Choir, Beith
The Fitzhardinge Consort, Bristol
The Fourth Choir, London
HIVE Choir, Belfast
Leeds Vocal Movement, Leeds
London Contemporary Voices, London
Musarc, London
New London Chamber Choir, London
Open Arts Community Choir, Belfast
Ordsall Acappella Singers, Salford
Ravenswood Singers, Newcastle
South Lakes A Cappella, Windermere
Spectrum Singers, Penarth
UK Choral AI Dataset Production
Choral AI dataset production by Ruth Waters with Vi Trinh and Isobel Peyton-Jones, Serpentine
Artistic Research commissioned by Berlin Artistic Research Programme
Musical research by Marko Weßnigk
Songbook arrangement by Evelyn Saylor, Composer’s Assistant
Machine learning development (HymnAI) for songbook by Algomus, University of Lille
Songbook design by Michael Oswell with Kees de Klein, music typesetting by Udi Perlman
Scientific collaboration on choral AI models (Choral Diffusion) by Ircam-STMS Sound Analysis and Synthesis team (Nils Demerlé, Matéo Fayet, Robin Meier, and Philippe Esling)
Machine learning support from Stability AI research team (Zach Evans and CJ Carr)
Choral recording by Ben Metsers
Data management by Tommie Introna
Choral data post-production by Ian Berman
Live sound engineering by Carlos Boix
HOLLY HERNDON & MAT DRYHURST BIO
Holly Herndon & Mathew Dryhurst are artists renowned for their pioneering work in machine learning, software and music. They develop their own technology, and systems for living with the technology of others, often with a focus on the ownership and augmentation of digital identity and voice. These technical protocols not only facilitate expansive artworks across media, but are proposed as artworks unto themselves.
In 2024 they presented the solo exhibition “The Call” at Serpentine Gallery, and took part in the Whitney Biennial. They co-founded Spawning, an organization building public domain AI models and data infrastructure. Their critically acclaimed musical works are released through 4AD and RVNG Intl. Holly holds a Ph.D in Computer Music from Stanford CCRMA, Mathew is largely self taught. They have held faculty positions at NYU, the European Graduate School and the Antikythera Program at the Berggruen Institute. They were awarded the 2022 Ars Electronica STARTS prize for digital art, and Austria’s first Digital Human Rights Award in 2024. Holly is part of the Berlin Artistic Research program 2024-2025.
THE GLITCHBOX
AN OPEN-SOURCE COLLABORATIVE AI PROTOCOL
The GlitchBox was created by Primavera De Filippi, Apolinario Passos, Marco Conti Šikić, and Giulio Trichilo (members of the Glitch Collective) in partnership with Hugging Face, Alien Intelligence, and 204.ai, commissioned by SXSW London, curated by Alex Poots and produced by North Star Studio.
Glitch BIO
GLITCH is a collective of avant-garde artists and visionaries operating at the intersection of art, technology, and societal transformation. The collective transcends traditional institutional boundaries, uniting a variety of polymaths who share a passion for collaborative exploration and a commitment to open-source ideals. As such, GLITCH does not just create art, it catalyzes new paradigms for creativity, dissolving boundaries between disciplines while building an open ecosystem that embraces collaborative creation and technological innovation as pathways to artistic exploration.
Born from the conviction that true innovation emerges when diverse minds collaborate in undistracted environments, the collective gathers every year during a two-weeks long residency at Château du Fey, where approximately 60 carefully selected artists, engineers, curators, philosophers, and technologists converge to reimagine the future of creative expression in the contemporary world. These residencies are a crucible for radical experimentation across blockchain, artificial intelligence, and other emergent technologies. The methodology is elegantly simple yet profoundly effective: bring the right people to the right place at the right time, then witness the magic unfold.
The collective's impact reverberates far beyond its residencies. GLITCH cultivates an ecosystem that reclaims creative control through collaborative processes, collective exhibitions, and interdisciplinary projects that would be impossible without this unique environment of cross-pollination. The results—from collective exhibitions to art manifestos, from on-chain choreographic works to blockchain-based lifeforms—demonstrate the transformative potential when visionary artists and technologists collaborate without constraints. The collective has also catalyzed groundbreaking initiatives that extend beyond the art world, such as the Remix NFT protocol, the Token-Bound Licensing standard, and the Off-Grid AI Manifesto—each challenging established norms while proposing alternative models for creation, ownership, and distribution in the digital age.
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© SXSW LONDON. All rights reserved. SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST LONDON and other SXSW, LLC marks used under license.
© 2025 SXSW® London t/a Panarise Limited

© SXSW LONDON. All rights reserved. SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST LONDON and other SXSW, LLC marks used under license.
© 2025 SXSW® London t/a Panarise Limited
Listening List
Welcome to Jamrock by Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley
Half Way Tree by Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley
Distant Relatives by Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley & Nas
Survival by Bob Marley
Exodus by Bob Marley
Catch a Fire by The Wailers
Burnin' by Bob Marley & the Wailers
Mind Control by Stephen Marley
Revelation Pt. 1: Root of Life by Stephen Marley
Revelation Pt. 2: Fruit of Life by Stephen Marley
Rock the World by Determine
Freedom Chant by Determine
Mi Go Through Dat by Determine
Teacher's Back by Vybz Kartel
Gangsta Blues by Tanya Stephens
Sweet and Nice by Marcia Griffiths
Gangsta for Life: The Symphony of David Brooks by Movado
Right Time by Mighty Diamonds
Satta Massagana by The Abyssinnians
Marcus Garvey by Burning Spear
Reading List
Jamaica Pulse: Art and Politics from Jamaican Diaspora
Ed. Kat Anderson
Felix Gonzales Torres
Ed. Julie Ault
A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to Belonging
Dionne Brand
The sound of culture
Louise Chude-Sokei
Create Dangerously: the Immigrant Artist at Work
Edwidge Danticat
Art as Experience
John Dewey
The Book of Enoch
Enoch
The Artists' & Writers' Cookbook: A Collection of Stories With Recipes
Natalie Eve Garrett
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls
Saidiya Hartman
Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
Saidiya Hartman
All About Love: New Visions
bell hooks
A Small Place
Jamaica Kincaid
zami: a new spelling of my name Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde
I Am Your Sister: Collected and Unpublished Writings
Audre Lorde
The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life
Drunvalo Melchezidek
Fugitive Testimony: On the Visual Logic of Slave Narratives
Janet Neary
Bodies of Water
Astrida Neimanis
The Natural Way to Draw
Kimone Nicolaides
God is Dead
Nietzsche
Of Sirens, Body & Faultlines
Nat Raha
Citizen: An American Lyric
Claudia Rankine
The Creative Mind
Rick Rubin
Existentialism is Humanism
Jean-Paul Sartre
The Wise Mind of His Imperial Majesty Emperor Haile Selassie I
Ed. Prince Ermias S. Selassie
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being
Christina Sharpe
The Rose That Grew from Concrete
Tupac Shakur
An Eye for the Tropics: Tourism, Photography, and Framing the Caribbean Picturesque
Krista A.Thompson
Shine: The Visual Economy of Light in African Diasporic Aesthetic Practice
Krista A.Thompson
Ezili's Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders
Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley
On Being Human as Praxis
Sylvia Wynter
Damien Roach, Grounding
Günseli Yalcinkaya
Introduction (quotes selected by the artist)
"It is often said that scientific instruments simply extend our senses. This is not true... They transform the very nature of what it is to see and to know."
Bruno Latour (‘Visualisation and Cognition’, 1986)
"To see things differently, to see things as they are and not as they are said to be—that is the only reality."
Ursula K. Le Guin ('The Dispossessed', 1974)
"The future must be built, but in order to build it we need to be able to see it."
Mark Fisher ('Ghosts of My Life', 2014)
"Everything changes and nothing remains still: you cannot step twice into the same stream." Heraclitus (circa 500 BCE)
In Damien Roach's Grounding, an immersive audiovisual installation that debuts at SXSW in London, he looks to the counterintuitive ideas described by quantum physics to help unpack our preconceived everyday notions of reality, emphasising the urgent need for new ways of seeing outside of our current system – to unlock a new level of the real, if you will. Drawing on scientific concepts such as superposition, where particles can exist in multiple states at once on a subatomic scale, as well as the vastness of deep time, these observations transcend the ordinary world of appearances, moving beyond our five senses into the impossibly small realm of atoms and particles, or to the inner world of our own consciousness. The ever-changing qualities of quantum phenomena suggest that nature isn't static but instead built on an interconnected network of dynamic interactions. Adding to this the scientific and philosophical concept of emergence, which explains how complex wholes emerge from simple parts, Grounding invokes the transient, fleeting and fluctuating nature of land, matter, and the environment, comparing it to the equally unstable ecology of the networked digital image.
Set to a soundscape produced from environmental field recordings extended and reinterpreted by Roach using generative AI audio systems, the installation consists of a never-repeating constellation of image and sound depicting natural phenomena, which aims to evoke all manner of states and possibilities, the seen and unseen. Using bespoke datasets, esoteric custom models and locally-run AI software applications, the animations flicker through their various iterations, which Roach likens to the visual equivalent of vinyl crackle, in contrast to the impenetrable hyper-fluid aesthetics that characterise the evolving arc of AI's generative visuality. Borrowing the algorithmic eye of generative media, computational modelling becomes an analogy to describe quantum measurement, where the latent space of AI evokes Hilbert space, a complex state of potentiality, containing all possible outcomes simultaneously – this is what informs the ever-fluctuating system-like environment of Grounding.
The installation's title, 'grounding', is a term used in generative AI. It describes the relationship between datasets and reality – enabling AI systems to connect abstract symbols to their real-world meaning and contexts. Implicit in this is the normative Western worldview - based on Renaissance ideas of mimesis - that sees images as accurate depictions of indexical reality. Whether it's a photograph or AI-generated media, these 'technical images' shape reality – they don't just reflect it. For German media theorist Vilém Flusser, the "pseudo-magical" quality of these technologies makes it increasingly hard to separate what's real and what's an algorithmic abstraction, computation or simulation. In the context of machine learning, the system senses the shape and feel of a thing and assigns it a position within a model. Its results are fundamentally nonlinear and emergent, albeit still informed by its dataset's implicit biases and limitations.
In her Document essay 'Hallucinating sense in the era of infinity-content', writer Caroline Busta traces the mainstreaming of generative AI as a fundamental change in the way that we process information. "What if there's something deeper, older, even organically emergent that has been nudging us to perceive and communicate in a fundamentally different way and 'machine learning neural networks' are, rather, answering that call?" she asks, hinting at a higher-dimensional potential of these technologies that skewers the pre-existing frameworks we use. It's true that the way that generative AI transmits information has most certainly reshaped how we organise and experience the world, a defining characteristic of any emerging technology.
Against an onslaught of images, the algorithmic apparatus itself becomes an observing body, remixing patterns that exist but cannot be perceived through the direct input of our senses – of time, space, and taxonomies. What does it mean to see a forest as an ever-changing entity instead of a fixed concept? What if we could unlock the wisdom of a plant to connect us to deeper forces outside the normal limits of perception? 'Grounding' compares these shifts to the new perspectives offered by past technologies, such as long-form satellite data visualisations, time-lapse photography, and X-rays, each unlocking new ways of seeing the world that were previously imperceptible to us, as articulated by Joanna Zylinska in what she has termed 'nonhuman photography'.
As machines become increasingly intelligent, and as we discover more about material reality, the idea that humans are separate and siloed from the rest of nature grows more insufficient. We could say that the human effort to capture and replicate reality is less a search for truth as it is an amplification of the human desire to conquer, to see the world in one's own image. Life, with a capital L, includes all kinds of non-human entities – animals, plants, minerals, objects – whose existence is everywhere. In Critical Zones (2020), Bruno Latour describes this relationship as follows: "The small – the bacteria – holds the big – the atmosphere – while the big also resides inside the small."
If we are to build a new structure of human awareness, we must first modify the grammar of our understanding of reality. Through its many thousands of images that visualise the instability, multiplicity, and potentiality of quantum reality, Grounding suggests that machine-generated representations have the potential to present alternative, and no less valid truths about the material world than those offered up by static photographs or seamless cinematics. A mapping of space, time and language that points outside of all three. Or, as Roach puts it: "A truth that embraces the inherent weirdness of quantum phenomena."
Günseli Yalcinkaya is a writer, researcher and internet folklorist based in London with a particular focus on emerging technologies and online culture. She is a Contributing Editor at Dazed and External Research Affiliate at Moth Quantum. She has appeared in talks and panels at the Architectural Association, BFI, Somerset House, Sónar+D, LAS Art Foundation, Unsound Festival, Vienna Digital Cultures and X Museum.
LDN LAB
LDN LAB Exhibition text here.
Beautiful Collisions
Beth Greenacre
Beautiful Collisions brings together contemporary artists whose work reflects the significant impact of artists from the Caribbean diaspora on British art and culture. The exhibition celebrates how the Caribbean has enriched Britain. While the artists remind us of the historical injustices inflicted on the region and its people, they make space for joy, healing, and radical care.
Housed in Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor's Baroque ecclesiastical masterpiece was built as one of the churches under the New Churches in London and Westminster Act of 1710. This government act was initiated to accommodate a growing population, including thousands of immigrants who arrived in London to settle in suburbs such as Spitalfields during the 17th century. Like the British churches built concurrently and throughout colonial rule in the Caribbean, Christ Church was created in an attempt to Anglicise the local population and quash Dissenters from the governing powers to the day.
The artists in Beautiful Collisions are dissidents from traditionally received knowledge. They honour pluralistic histories and cultures, celebrate displaced bodies and invisible stories, and unite us through shared experiences while elevating the experience of loss. At the same time as acknowledging the enduring traumas of slavery, each artist demonstrates the healing powers of art.
Beautiful Collisions occupies Christ Church, a site of worship which provides a poignant context for the work of Alberta Whittle, Alvaro Barrington, Denzil Forrester, Runkus, Tavares Strachan, and Zinzi Minott. Each artist explores sound, music, ritual, communal cohesion, and freedom of expression, drawing parallels with religions worldwide.
At the centre of Beautiful Collisions are the dynamic paintings of Denzil Forrester, who began capturing the energy and sense of community of East London's reggae and dub nightclub scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Paintings and works on paper from the 90s to the present day set the scene for Beautiful Collisions, in which bodies commune and come together in reverence for reggae and dub artists such as pioneer Jah Shaka and Mad Professor. A brand new painting commissioned for SXSW London depicts a DJ and a mass of indistinguishable, pulsating bodies; called Congregation, the painting is housed during the exhibition in the Nave of Christ Church. The DJ becomes the preacher, the crowd, the assembly, and the message to come together.
To access the heart of the exhibition, we descend into the crypt, where Alvaro Barrington's stained glass windows—used to express important religious messages for centuries—light the way, casting Caribbean sunsets and night skies onto the architecture. Meanwhile, Alberta Whittle's life-size figures, dressed in traditional Caribbean carnival ware and captured in various stages of limbo, weave their way through Forrester's painted dancers.
Born in Barbados, Whittle's bodies draw on characters from across the region, including Jamaica's Pitchy Patchy and Barbados' Shaggy Bear, both of which continue to appear at Carnival. Historically, in Barbados, Carnival was timed with the end of the sugar cane harvest; inevitably linked to oppression, Carnival was more than a mere celebration; it represented liberation and unity. The costumes and masks of Carnival goers were forms of masquerade, and their music and dances were not only moments of kinship and ascension over norms, rules and regulations, but they also represented ideas beyond the reach of the ruling classes. However, with Whittle's performers, the dance, which many regard as a traditional Caribbean dance, freezes moments of physical contortions to highlight how enslaved Africans were forced to perform for the amusement of their owners. The figures take their title, Matrix Moves, from a popular dancehall move and Keanu Reeves' famous film; they, too, are dodging bullets in their masquerade.
Whittle explores the tension between respectability, its norms, and the notion of wildness, such as that of Carnival, its costumes, music, and moves. And at the centre of her enquiry is the possibility of imagining alternative readings of the Caribbean black womxn. In two other works by Whittle, naked womxn are suspended in watery scenes. Water, of course, plays a significant role in the narratives around womxn's bodies, whilst the Atlantic plays a dominant role in the history of colonial extraction of people and resources. In the hands of Whittle, water is a symbol of feminine fluidity and the ability to transgress boundaries. The ocean is an active waterway that, although potent with ancestral memory, is a space that can create connections, offer possibilities to cleanse, and allow alternative realities to be born. Two textile works stretched over painted frames – Beneath the waves, we shapeshift (before I was a shipworm) and Beneath the waves, we shapeshift (before I was a seal) - reference the myth of Drexciya, an Afrofuturist story about an underwater empire created by the unborn children of enslaved African women; womxn's float effortlessly and with ease within the transformative space of the ocean.
Like Whittle, Zinzi Minott explores the place that Black womxn's bodies hold across geographies, space and time and as with Barrington, music has been a continuous part of her practice. Having been raised within sound system culture, Minott frequently draws on repetition, bass, mixing, remixing, vibration and dark space. In her new work premiering in Beautiful Collisions, Minott tells Caribbean stories about movement, migration and The Windrush Generation. This year's iteration of Fi Dem VIII, an annual multimedia project made on the anniversary of the docking of Empire Windrush, is a soundscape that merges with visual sources sampled from archival material, including the artist's personal archives, family videos and recordings. The glitch is a device used across Minott's art practice. In Fi Dem VIII, these distortions, stuttering and abrupt shifts in sound create unique sonic textures and effects that halt us and ask us to review the steady flow of reality. Here it exists as a nod to the dissonance the artist feels as a queer Black womxn whilst also presenting a place where new realities can be realised, and intergenerational pains can be severed.
If in Minott's ruptures, there is space where we can understand how to better "be together", it is in repetition and rhythm that Alvaro Barrington asks us to reflect on the universal and what brings us together. The artist returns to the image of the sun setting over the Caribbean Sea, a subject he has explored over the years. It is an act that encourages contemplative looking. In Beautiful Collisions, the setting sun features in the brand-new stained glass windows and the night sky. Once the sun has set and the stars emerge, we are asked to pause and remind ourselves of the universal rhythms of the day and the passage of time.
Movement is present throughout the exhibition, including the movement of bodies across the Atlantic, in dance halls, and communion. This movement reminds us of the exchange of ideas, identities, and cultures. For Beautiful Collisions, Tavares Strachen has devised a dinner for guests entitled The Last Supper (A Farewell to the Flavours We Might Lose). The performance celebrates the ingredients that we may loose through the continued exploitation of natural resources and environmental degradation that continues as a legacy of colonialism. The artist has carefully devised a meal and will present indigenous Caribbean ingredients in combination to refute stereotypes. The evening will be multi-sensory and include a performance with Jamaican vocalist, producer, and composer Runkus, whose genre-blurring work pushes the boundaries of reggae into bold, future-facing territory and a Gospel Choir.
A constant throughout Beautiful Collisions is a Caribbean Cafe housed at the heart of the exhibition, serving not only as a site to commune, share food and experience the exhibition at a slower pace but also as a place where talks, screenings and tastings will take place. The cafe will house a library of books the artists chose and a collection of vinyl curated by Runkus and Tavares Strachen for guests to listen to. Alvaro Barrington Studio’s musical program Emelda's Junction with Errol and Alex Rita's Touching Bass will curate musical activations throughout the week, which will celebrate soca, calypso, reggae and the wider musical legacy of the Caribbean and Caribbean diaspora.