Saturday 14 April, 12.45pm–4pm

Join us to close our gallery exhibition more of an avalanche with an afternoon of talks and conversations expanding on the themes it raises.

To book a place, including options with transport from Cambridge, go to our Eventbrite page here.

This event will offer a final opportunity to view the exhibition, which closes on 15 April, and an occasion to expand on some of themes it raises: from sickness and crip theory, to the need for intergenerational conversations, and the dissolution of spaces for both critical conversation and club culture.

12pm – Arrivals including time to visit the exhibition and thecafé@wysing which is open 10am to 4pm.

12.50pm – Welcome.

1pm – Nick Aikens, Curator at Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven and co-curator of recent exhibitions 'The Place Is Here' and 'Rasheed Araeen: A Retrospective' will draw on his research to contextualise more of an avalanche and to revisit the key themes of the exhibition. Followed by a Q&A with Wysing curator John Bloomfield.

1.30pm – Taking their contribution to ‘more of an avalanche’ as a starting point, artist Raju Rage will be in conversation with Trishna Shah. Together they will discuss their research and experiences of activism that informed the work.

1.50pm – Break with time to visit the café.

2.20pm –  Artist Leah Clements will discuss ideas and issues around sickness and ‘crip’ theory and talk about a new network of art practitioners who will be in residence later this year at Wysing.

2.40 pm – Current artist-in-residence Phoebe Collings-James will talk about the new work she is developing with Last Yearz Interesting Negro/Jamila Johnson-Small in relation to disobedience and sound as a weapon.

3pm – Music producer Elijah will present 'Last Dance', a timely and urgent investigation into the rapid changes affecting UK club culture, and the impact of those changes on music and youth culture.

3.20pm – Open conversation followed by a summing up from Nick Aikens.

4pm – Ends

Contributor Biographies:

Nick Aikens has been a tutor at the DAI Art Praxis since 2013. He is currently a curator at the Van Abbemuseum (since 2012). Recent and ongoing projects have focused on the 1980s and specifically the UK Black Arts Movement, and a retrospective / monograph on Rasheed Araeen. He leads the current research programme Deviant Practice at the Van Abbe. He is a Research Affiliate, CCC at the Visual Arts Department, HEAD, Geneva (since 2016) and a member of the editorial board for L’Internationale Online (since 2013). He was also recently a tutor at the Design Academy Eindhoven (2015-17).

Leah Clements is an artist based in London. Her practice is concerned with emotional experiences, the relationship between the psychological and the physical, and instances of self-loss into other people or worlds. Self/other boundaries and collective identities, the subconscious, and the impact of emotion on the body have been explored through collapse (prelude) at Muddy Yard (2017), we felt the presence of someone else at Jupiter Woods (2016), Beside Chisenhale Gallery Online Commission (2016), Beside at Chisenhale Gallery (2015), You Promised Me Poems, Vitrine (2015), and The Empath Project at Res. She is an artist in residence at space, London on the Art + Technology programme where she has been working on a VR game titled sick bed, and will be an artist in residence at Rupert, Vilnius in June 2018. During her residency at Wysing she has invited collaborators Rebecca Bligh, Uma Breakdown, Elena Colman, Alice Hattrick and Lizzy Rose to form a new network of art practitioners who identify as ‘crip’, disabled, or otherwise non-conforming to standard ideas of good health.

Phoebe Collings-James is a Jamaican British artist, born in London and living in New York. Her practice is intentionally messy and sprawling, focused on how we live with getting bodied. Her works take form in drawing, video, sculpture, text and music, with a distinctly corporeal approach. She burdens ubiquitous materials with a process of symbolic layering, all in order to explore emotional connections to the politics and erotics of violence, language and fear. Phoebe’s work has been exhibited internationally - exhibitions include Harlem Postcards, Studio Museum Harlem, ATROPHILIA, Company Gallery, New York, Just Enough Violence, Arcadia Missa, London, Choke on your Tongue, Artuner at ICI, London, The Flesh Is All You Have If You Mortify That There Is No Hope For You, Ritter Zamet Gallery, London and Blood on the Leaves Blood on the Roots, Preteen Gallery, Mexico City.

Elijah is an electronic music producer and co-founder of influential grime label Butterz, described by the Guardian as “one of the genre’s smartest operations”. He and the core artists (Flava D, Swindle & Royal-T) on the label he runs with his partner Skilliam have toured globally and have been a fixture across the club and festival circuit since 2010. He held a residency at London’s fabric from 2013-2016, and broadcasted weekly on the then pirate, now community station Rinse FM from 2008-2014. It’s seen him collaborate with all of the top tier artists in Grime such as Skepta, JME, Wiley, Kano and Stormzy. His work spans music programming, journalism, a&r and artist management, and shines a light on the artistic, social and economic challenges and opportunities for emerging artists. His podcast series Rhythm&Cash® explored these issues head on with MCs, Producers and Journalists talking openly about how they make a living. As Associate Artistic Director at Lighthouse, Elijah produces ‘Last Dance’ a series of talks, performances and online publications, that takes the debate on the road and into clubs and galleries in cities across the UK, for a timely and urgent look at the rapidly changing landscape for artists and creative communities.

Raju Rage is an interdisciplinary artist who is proactive about using art, education and activism to forge creative survival. They primarily use their non-conforming body as a vehicle of embodied knowledge; to bridge the gap between dis/connected bodies, theory and practice, text and the body and aesthetics and the political substance. They work in performance, sculpture, soundscapes and moving image, focusing on techniques of resistance and utilising everyday objects and everyday life experiences in communicating narratives around gender, race and culture. They investigate history, memory and trauma, with an emphasis on colonial legacy, its continuation and impact on the body. Raju Rage is based in London and has recently shown work visibility vs opacity at Dirty Politics Filthy Mouth, Framer Framed Amsterdam and Edinburgh's Artist Moving Image Festival, published in 'Decolonising Sexualties: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions and presented at ‘Sediments and Arrhythmias: race, sense and sensation' at UCL on the body and the un/archive.

Trishna Shah aka Trishna I has been a roots reggae DJ and singer for over 15 years, building connections in the UK roots reggae soundsystem scene. She co-founded Uprizing - a Cambridge based promotions company who have organised events throughout the UK. She is a writer and contributor to Galdem magazine, and is part of Off Road Circus - an organisation that combines circus and social activism.