And how did it manage to disappear with barely a trace? Artists Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser (Hylozoic/Desires) go on a journey through the archives to unearth the story of the Great Hedge of India, a 4,000km long hedge grown by the British East India Company in the 1840s, to control the flow of salt across the continent. But despite being one of the longest of its kind in history, no visual trace of the hedge can be found in the archives Ahead of their installation in the courtyard...
Mar 07, 2025•30 min
Our Future is tied to the future of our soil. Our decisions as to how we care for and use it matter. Soil teaches us that cycles are ongoing, and even in decline every day offers us opportunities for new beginnings. In this final episode Shenece Oretha explores the regenerative qualities of soil and composting as a model for personal redemption. We hear from Palestinian grower Mohammed Saleh whose life story offers a personal story of hope, looking at how permaculture and art can help to heal th...
Feb 05, 2025•36 min
Much of the history of human making springs from the soil. Cuneiform, the earliest form of writing, was engraved into clay; paint pigments come from minerals in the soil; and much of our material history is held in ceramics. But soil is not neutral; it is deeply entangled with politics of ownership embedded in the land. In this episode Shenece Oretha probes the ways the soil and clay are inspiring artists today, looking at the stories soil can tell about our past and our potential future. Cerami...
Jan 29, 2025•35 min
Our entire existence is dependent on our relationship with soil. As awareness builds of the enormity of the ecological crisis that we are facing, a growing number of artists are engaging with soil as a material in their work. This three part series responds to the Somerset House exhibition ‘Soil: The World at Our Feet’, unearthing soil's role in our future through the work of artists and thinkers working with it. Soil is the basis of many creation stories around the world. It is our beginning, a...
Jan 22, 2025•31 min
Soil is unsung, and largely hidden from view. What if we were to put it in the foreground? To think of it as a collaborator? Across three episodes, presenter and Somerset House Studios artist Shenece Oretha traces the life cycle of soil, from it’s foundational role at the beginning of life with artist Asad Raza, through to its manifestation as one of the earliest creative materials, with ceramist and writer Jennifer Lucy Allan. We hear from artists Annalee Davis and Lauren Gault on the ways soil...
Jan 21, 2025•1 min
Why has the club been so pivotal to the history of black queer placemaking? For artist and filmmaker Topher Campbell, growing up as a Black queer man in 1980s and 90s Britain, the club provided a sanctuary from the judgement and hostility of mainstream society. It became a space for community, self-discovery, and, as a care leaver, a sense of home. As co-founder of the rukus! archive and curator of the exhibition Making a rukus!: Black Queer Histories Through Love and Resistance , Campbell refle...
Dec 05, 2024•29 min
What one site in Croydon can tell us about the biggest moment of civil unrest in Britain in a generation. Listen to the full episode: Apple | Spotify Artist Imran Perretta was in his early 20s when the riots began in 2011. What started in London quickly spread across England, but it was the footage of a furniture shop set on fire in Croydon which stayed with Imran. Now, 13 years later, Imran revisits that moment in a new commission for Somerset House Studios which recreates Reeves Corner in the ...
Sep 25, 2024•45 sec
What one site in Croydon can tell us about the biggest moment of civil unrest in Britain in a generation. Artist Imran Perretta was in his early 20s when the riots began in 2011. What started in London quickly spread across England, but it was the footage of a furniture shop set on fire in Croydon which stayed with Imran. Now, 13 years later, Imran revisits that moment in a new commission for Somerset House Studios which recreates Reeves Corner in the gallery space, accompanied by a new work for...
Sep 25, 2024•34 min
How can cuteness be used to sugar coat difficult messages? In this episode we join another artist commissioned for the Somerset House exhibition CUTE, Brooklyn based Sean-Kierre Lyons , to explore how cute characters have been used to tackle sensitive ideas from the middle ages on. In her practice, Sean-Kierre brings the grotesque and the cute together to approach challenging themes. Much of her work is inspired by cartoon animation, specifically its roots in racist caricature. For her Somerset ...
Apr 12, 2024•27 min
Hannah Diamond reflects on the transformative powers of cute Cute aesthetics have exploded into pop culture. We use filters to make ourselves look like cute cats, dot our texts with hearts and smiley faces and our phones ping with alerts from cartoon animals reminding us to study French or change energy suppliers. Brands have been using cute images to sell us things since the dawn of advertising but with the rise of social media we are increasingly becoming the brand, as we seek to cutify our on...
Mar 28, 2024•29 min
What does it mean to use the voice of others within a performance, text or recording? In this episode of Not Strictly Speaking, we look at the ways in which the voice is used both in service of power, and as a way of reclaiming agency. Prem Sahib ’s new sound performance for Assembly, Alleus , takes a speech by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman and renders it into a new form through layers of processing and repetition, suggesting the idea of a curse or malediction. Resisting the idea that o...
Mar 22, 2024•27 min
The communal voice has a long history within the resistance movement, from African American spirituals, to the protest songs of the civil rights movement and the current pro-Palestine marches. In this episode we explore the enduring power of group singing and how it can embody resistance and resilience with Turner prize winning artist Helen Cammock and artist and Somerset House Studios resident, Vivienne Griffin. Vivienne's sound work often centres around the voice, both her own and those of sma...
Mar 21, 2024•28 min
The voice is something we all share and yet rarely do we explore the full range of our instrument. Ahead of Assembly at Somerset House we talk to two vocal artists who stretch the capacities of the voice as a sound producing instrument to look at the ways the voice can channel meaning beyond words; voice artist and composer Elaine Mitchener , who is resident at Somerset House Studios; and the pioneer of Extended Vocal Technique, the renowned vocal artist and composer Joan La Barbara . Elaine’s v...
Mar 20, 2024•32 min
A three-part podcast series, released 20-22 March 2024, exploring different manifestations of the voice, produced in conjunction with Somerset House Studios' Assembly. Each episode follows artists featured in the 2024 programme, as they unpack the power of the voice beyond speech; examining it as a form of possession and how we might give voice to the inanimate. Vocal artist and composer Elaine Mitchener looks at how the human voice can extend through objects and lay bare the inequities of globa...
Mar 20, 2024•1 min
Artists Revival Cohen & Tuur Van Balen explore how humans have transformed the animals that we live with. The way in which we think about animals is riven with contradictions. We dote on our pets yet consume vast amounts of animals as meat. The UK consistently donates more money to animal welfare charities than any other cause and yet have created pet breeds with horrifying health defects. Revival Cohen & Tuur Van Balen are an artist duo who are interested in these ambiguities, in partic...
Feb 19, 2024•28 min
The road to success is paved with inspirational quotes about failure. But could failure be more productive than success? In this episode of The Process we step inside the community of designers on site at Makerversity in Somerset House to explore the role of mistakes in the design process. Founding member Tom Stables talks to biomaterial designer Cassie Quinn, who makes sustainable sequins out of household waste. She shares stories of the mistakes that ended up being transformative to her practi...
Jan 31, 2024•33 min
Tracing the legacy of Black British fashion with Andrew Ibi, Jazzie B & Martine Rose. The late 80s to the early 90s saw a Black cultural renaissance in Britain. Artists and designers like Sonia Boyce, Joe Casely-Hayford and Soul II Soul were breaking new ground across the arts and changing the landscape for Black creatives. While putting together The Missing Thread exhibition, co-curator Andrew Ibi (Black Orientated Legacy Development Agency), realised that despite its significance this era ...
Dec 02, 2023•33 min
What if the way we're approaching the crisis is part of the crisis? We look at the effect our endless drive for productivity is having on the planet and how we’re intimately entangled with the natural world with Somerset House Studios artist Sam Williams on the invisible labour of the earthworm, poet Jason Allen-Paisant on tenderness in rural Jamaica, systems theorist Nafeez Ahmed on why the old systems are crumbling and artist Natalie Sharp on her love of ecosex. Soft Life: Experiments In New W...
Jul 25, 2023•29 min
How can the soft body challenge social hierarchies? We turn our gaze towards the soft life of the body and unpack new ways of thinking about embodiment in artistic practice with Somerset House studios artists Florence Peake on radical softness in somatics, choreographer and writer Dr Martin Hargreaves on the history of protest through softness in dance, Ilona Sagar on rendering bodies hard through architecture and disabled film maker Jameisha Prescod on the colonial history of black pain. Soft L...
Jul 25, 2023•30 min
How can we make time free? We contemplate different ways of experiencing time beyond the linear, with Somerset House Studios artist Shenece Oretha on transforming time through the practice of listening, sociologist Judy Wajcman on unpicking progress from speed in the digital sphere and psychologist Dr Ruth Ogden on how our experience of time is relational and whether it’s possible to conceive of ‘free time’ in a modern world. Soft Life: Experiments In New Ways of Being Soft Life is part of a gro...
Jul 25, 2023•32 min
Our ways of working aren’t working. How can art offer new ways of being outside of the values of hustle culture? We explore changing attitudes to work post-pandemic and re-evaluate the importance of rest as a creative space. We hear from Bayo Akomolafe about the fertile spaces of the cracks, Black Power Naps on rest as a radical act and we lie down to contemplate art in Somerset House with artist Raquel Meseguer Zafe, after her workshop for this year’s Hyper Functional Ultra Healthy programme. S...
Jul 25, 2023•30 min
A new limited series for the Somerset House Podcast Soft Life is part of a growing number of movements challenging the way we work. How can soft approaches in art help us rethink our relationship to time, the body and the earth? In March 2020, the non-stop nature of our 24/7 world came to a stop. For many in the Western world, it allowed us a space to reconsider the way we value our time and with that our relationship to work. Now, amidst the strikes and the resignations, a new movement is emerg...
Jul 25, 2023•1 min
Artist Leila Dear explores whether geometry could be a universal language What do our attempts to communicate with extra-terrestrials say about us? Jerwood artist in residence, Leila Dear uses geometry as a way of thinking about interdependence and non-human design. In this episode of The Process she explores whether geometry could be used as a ‘Lingua Cosmica’, a universal language by which to communicate with other intelligences beyond earth. Given the prevalence of geometric patterning within...
Mar 15, 2023•33 min
The artist Libby Heaney spent many years as a quantum physicist researching the concept of quantum entanglement, the way objects can affect each other even when separated by vast distances, or what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’. It’s an idea that challenges our assumptions about the physical world and for Libby it offers up fertile ways of rethinking old hierarchies. In this podcast we take up this mystery and dance with it, seeing where metaphors of entanglement can take us. Fir...
Mar 01, 2023•30 min
Film maker Morgan Quaintance is interested in what AI can teach us about being human. For his commission for our digital platform Channel, he set out to explore divergent cultural attitudes to AI between the UK and Japan. But when he started putting out requests for interviews, he was met with a wall of silence. Public institutions, AI developers, robotics companies and schools all seemed unwilling to reply and the film couldn't be made. Frustrated about the stonewalling he'd experienced, he sta...
Feb 15, 2023•30 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Elizabeth Bernholtz, aka Gazelle Twin , has had paranormal experiences since her early childhood. Ever since she’s been both terrified and thrilled by the occult, gripped by stories of poltergeist possession and famous hauntings. Fresh off the back of her commission for The Horror Show at Somerset House, Gazelle Twin is getting back into the writing process for her next album which explores her long held fascination with ghosts. We join her as she considers what it would mean to take these stori...
Feb 01, 2023•35 min
The creative process is inspired by worlds beyond itself. The Somerset House podcast series 'The Process' brings those worlds together, platforming the big conversations which go on to inspire new work. Drawing on our creative community on site and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows one artist as they explore an idea from their practice to see where it ends up. We hear their journey from the studio on, as they invite other thinkers to discuss an idea that has come out of a work ...
Jan 27, 2023•2 min
Sep 07, 2022•2 min
Many African Filmmakers, both on the continent and in the diaspora, have been using the medium to connect and communicate across time and space. Having grown up both in Nigeria and the west, Akinola Davies Jr attempts to bridge the gap between traditional and millennial Black communities in both locations. Award-winning filmmaker and author of Love for Liberation: African Independence, Black Power, and a Diaspora Underground Dr. Robin J. Hayes joins in for a discussion of their personal journeys...
Sep 07, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Questions and complications of the metaverse are broken down by artist collective Keiken, whose cross-dimensional practice merges the physical with the digital by building online worlds and augmented realities. Here they meet with Jazmin Morris, a creative computing artist and educator based in London whose own practice and research explore representation and inclusivity within technology.
Sep 07, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 2
