The Joyous Thing #5: Turntabalism Workshop with NikNak

NikNak presents a relaxed Turntablism workshop at Leadworks specifically for LGBTQIA+ People of Colour who also identify as female, trans and non-binary designed to give participants the confidence to play the music they want without fear or anxiety.

NikNak says: “there continues to be a lack of authentic diversity and representation in line-ups in electronic music, especially where DJ-ing is concerned”

NikNak is an artist known for her creative and boundary-breaking work, who has gained worldwide recognition with her unusual albums, remixes, and engaging performances. In 2020, she made history as the first Black turntablist to receive the prestigious Oram Award. Not limited to any one genre or role, NikNak is a composer, sound designer, DJ, and electronic artist. With multiple releases, collaborations, and live shows, NikNak stands out for her unique style. Featured in various publications as a rising star, NikNak continues to advance the boundaries of sound innovation with her complex and singular approach to turntables and spatial music production.

 

This workshop is specifically for LGBTQIA+ People of Colour who also identify as female, trans and non-binary. To book your place, email info@karst.org.uk.

The Joyous Thing #5: Vocal Improvisation Workshop with Dali de Saint Paul

In this introductory workshop with Dali de Saint Paul, you will play with exercises and improvisation techniques, and listen to examples from the history of experimental sound and music, exploring the voice as a musical, communal, and political instrument, and how multiple voices can interact in the context of improvisation. 

Dali De Saint Paul is a prolific collaborator and a prominent figure in Bristol’s improvised music scene who likes to explore musical dialogues with musicians across different genres. Over 6 years, her improvised project EP/64 involved more than 40 musicians and visual artists across 64 concerts. Described as having a ‘raw vocal style’, Dali is completely self-taught as a vocalist and a musician. 

The workshop lasts for 1 hour approx. No experience or musical training is required. Tickets are free but booking is recommended to reserve a space.

Click here to book

The Joyous Thing #5: NikNak supported by I AM FYA

NikNak is an artist known for her creative and boundary-breaking work, who has gained worldwide recognition with her unusual albums, remixes, and engaging performances. In 2020, she made history as the first Black turntablist to receive the prestigious Oram Award. Not limited to any one genre or role, NikNak is a composer, sound designer, DJ, and electronic artist. With multiple releases, collaborations, and live shows, NikNak stands out for her unique style. Featured in various publications as a rising star, NikNak continues to advance the boundaries of sound innovation with her complex and singular approach to turntables and spatial music production.

I AM FYA has been mesmerising audiences across the UK and beyond with her distinctive collision of live sample manipulation, experimental yet soulful vocals, and full spectrum sonic arrangements. Her performance has recently been described as “Barbadian bass science and undefinable grandeur”.

 

This event is part of The Joyous Thing #5. In partnership with Outlands, KARST presents a weekend of experimental music and performance in Plymouth. The Joyous Thing #5 is an opportunity to experience talking, dancing, singing and socialising together. Together, we will explore the connected themes of collaboration, mutual support, and equality of access — centred around the vital question: how do we continue to keep things Joyous?

 

Click here to book

General admission: £9 | Concession: £6

*Concession tickets can be purchased by students with a valid student ID and people receiving Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Disability Benefits and Income Support/Job Seekers allowance.

The Joyous Thing #5: Penumbra

An experimental performance created by vocalist DALI DE SAINT PAUL, electronic composer and double bassist MAXWELL STERLING, and visual artists CHARLIE HOPE and REBECCA SALVADORI. Emerging from a collaborative process across a series of shared sessions, Penumbra comprises improvised music and sound structured by a score of video and lighting elements. Commissioned by Outlands, the project will take shape over a series of live shows concluding at KARST.

This event is part of The Joyous Thing #5. In partnership with Outlands, KARST presents a weekend of experimental music and performance in Plymouth. The Joyous Thing #5 is an opportunity to experience talking, dancing, singing and socialising together. Together, we will explore the connected themes of collaboration, mutual support, and equality of access — centred around the vital question: how do we continue to keep things Joyous?

 

General admission: £9 | Concession: £6 

Click here to book

*Concession tickets can be purchased by students with a valid student ID and people receiving Universal Credit, Pension Credit, Disability Benefits and Income Support/Job Seekers allowance. 

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Dali de Saint Paul is known as a relentless collaborator and improviser, the voice of searing industrial duo Harrga, female improvising ensemble Viridian, trio dark idl, supergroup Ondata Rossa, and as the consistent element in her recently-concluded ‘self-exploding’ project EP/64, which existed for 64 live shows, each with a different line up, and involving over forty artists over a six-year period.

Maxwell Sterling’s multidisciplinary output as a sound producer, composer and double bassist spans regular collaborations with other musicians, visual artists, filmmakers and fashion designers. His work creates points of reference between precision sound synthesis and acoustic traditions, and can be heard on lauded solo releases for The Death of Rave and AD93, and his 2022 EP with Martha Skye Murphy, Distance on Ground (American Dreams).

Rebecca Salvadori is a London based artist working at the intersection between video art and documentary. Her film works act as constellations of highly personal and wilfully elusive heterogeneous elements: multifaceted portraits of moments, people and environments, moving between personal and transpersonal scales. Over the last 15 years she has consistently engaged with experimental music, exploring ways to connect the moving image with sound practices, live performance and alternative forms of storytelling.

Charlie Hope creates installations and performances which use light and space along with elements like video and coding to generate sensory experiences.  He has presented solo work and collaborations with other artists and musicians at galleries, clubs and public spaces across Europe. He co-founded the London Topophobia collective, and has recently presented projects with Amsterdam’s HetHEM, London’s ICA and Nottingham Contemporary

 

ABOUT OUTLANDS NETWORK:

The OUTLANDS network was founded in 2017 out of a motivation to pool resources, build audiences, and support diverse, high-quality music and the organisations and individuals that strive to promote it. They include a variety of multidisciplinary curators, producers, and non-profit organisations.  Initially spanning two years, the OUTLANDS programme produced six flagship tours, each showcasing a new commission by one of the eight core partner organisations (including KARST) across the eight regions that comprise the network. In 2021 OUTLANDS opened up its membership and now comprises around 40 members and growing, covering all corners of the UK. Find out more about The Outlands Network.

A Silent Walk

Starting at 10.30am on Sunday 26th November, Ashish Ghadiali (artist, activist and curator of our current exhibition Against Apartheid) will lead a silent walk from the Mayflower Steps on Plymouth Barbican up to the Peace Garden on Plymouth Hoe, as a performance of non-violent and decolonial civic intention.

This public performance is open for all to join and is a culmination of the Open City Night School, a participatory space that has been held by Radical Ecology at KARST throughout the duration of the exhibition, where Plymothians have been invited to consider methodologies including alternative mapping and deep listening as tactics for deconstructing standard civic narratives and forging new collectivities.

How might we walk together in spite of difference? How might we acknowledge the diversity of histories that come together in every moment of public life and work collectively towards a just and sustainable planetary future – here and now?

A Silent Walk will be preceded by a short deep listening workshop (starting at 10am at the Mayflower Steps) conducted by Ximena Alarcon from the Center for Deep Listening.

A Silent Walk is part of the Black Atlantic weekend within Open City – a season of decolonial art and public programming organised by Radical Ecology through autumn 2023 with partners across South-West England and in the context of the exhibition Against Apartheid at KARST.

This event is free.

Artist Panel: Against Apartheid

Curator Ashish Ghadiali and artists Annalee Davis, Kedisha Coakley, Iman Datoo and Ashanti Hare will be joining us in the Fenster space for a panel discussion as part of the opening event for our upcoming exhibition Against Apartheid. The panel will be discussing the aspects of their practice that are showcased in the exhibition.

This event has now sold out, but we welcome you to join us in the gallery from 6-8pm on 28 September for the Against Apartheid exhibition opening event. There will be food from Jabulani and drinks from Minerva available to buy throughout the event.

Knut Åsdam & Ben Borthwick in Conversation

To mark the opening of Knut Åsdam’s Murmansk / Kirkenes at KARST, join us for an in-conversation event between the Norwegian artist and filmmaker and KARST’s Head of Programme, Ben Borthwick.

 

About  Knut Åsdam

One of Norway’s foremost artists, Knut Åsdam produces films and video installations with an acute sense of subjectivity and language, exploring the politics and poetics of architecture, place and community. Åsdam ́s work has been shown internationally, including presentations at MOMA, Tate Modern, Bergen Kunsthall, Tate Britain, Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (Rotterdam), Venice Biennial, Kunsthalle Bern, Istanbul Biennial, FRAC Bourgogne, MACRO (Rome), Museum of Contemporary Art (Oslo), Manifesta7, Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Åsdam’s articles on cinema and the politics of space and gender have been published widely.

About Ben Borthwick

Ben Borthwick is Head of Programme at KARST, a gallery and studio complex in Plymouth, UK. He combines working internationally with grass roots artist development. He was previously Artistic Director of Plymouth Arts Centre, CEO of international art prize Artes Mundi and Assistant Curator at Tate Modern. In parallel with his work at KARST he runs PRIMEdesign, an ongoing community project connecting young skateboarders to contemporary art. He has published widely on contemporary art, sound and experimental music.

 

Murmansk / Kirkenes is supported by Arts Council England, the Royal Norwegian Embassy in London and Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).

 

Free admission. Book your ticket here.

 

Seals’kin: calling for the turning of the tide

Last November, British-Finnish artist, composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki led an improvised waterside performance at Devil’s Point, Plymouth, exploring seal calling songs as practices of making kin. This site specific vocal improvisation was performed by a choir of local singers and grew out of an introductory workshop rooted in Tuulikki’s exploratory vocal practice. This workshop and performance are part of a larger body of work, exploring myths of human-seal hybridity and folkloric musical practices to offer alternative forms of identification with more-than-human kin.

Seals’kin in Plymouth was delivered by KARST as part of British Art Show 9, with support from Paul Mellon Centre. This project was produced in Plymouth by Flock South West.

For a window into the ideas and processes behind Hanna’s breathtaking performance, check out the film below…

Film: Amber Amare

Transcript

00:12 Hi. My name is Hanna Tuulikki and I’m an artist, composer and performer based in Glasgow.

00:21 I have lived in Scotland since 2003. Scottish culture and landscape filtered into my work and informed my work in many ways. The work that I have been sharing here in Plymouth is a project called Seals’kin which is inspired by Selkie Mythology which is rooted in Scottish traditions. 

00:52 At the heart of what I do I work with the body, explore ways of communicating stories that speak beyond or before language. I explore this with my voice through extended vocal improvisation and composition and with movement, with gesture, with dance. This work with the body is realized in live contexts, within performances, participatory performance and multi channel audio visual installations. And then there’s another element of my practice which is drawing which underpins my process and I create visual scores which help within rehearsal and then they also find their way into sharing spaces with audiences. So sometimes a visual score can be a way to access a particular meaning within a work. 

01:57 My practice has changed over the years. I was making music with friends, discovering the joys of improvised music. I remember sitting down and giving myself permission to use my voice in my practice to find a synthesis between visual and performance forms. Some years down the line about ten years later I gave myself permission to start exploring dance. There’s been this slow return to things that brought me joy as a child. A little part of the work that I make is speaking to younger Hana and say it’s okay to be you. 

03:01 To feel together, to become relational, to ground ourselves within listening to each other and the place we were in. And through that there is the possibility of transformation. I hope that people can take a part of the experience today into the everyday. 

03:29 I would like to continue within future research and future projects exploring this felt place of grief, anxiety, anger, trauma that comes with ecological awareness. How we can sit with those or stay with the trouble of those difficult feelings and harness radical hope to support change in ourselves and in our communities. Another aspect is considering which bodies are mourn-able. Thinking about species lost, biodiversity lost. Finding ways to question which of our kin we can grieve together. Another aspect is creating a space for people to come together to do something. That liveness, that participation – but a kind of gentle participation that is about these moments of community. 

Sonic Faction: Audio Essay as Medium and Method

Sonic Faction presents an occasion for immersive collective listening. A programme of three diverse ‘audio essays’ by Kode9, Justin Barton and Mark Fisher, and Robin Mackay invites listeners to experience the ways in which sound and voice can produce new sensory terrains and provoke speculative thought.

Kode9’s Astro-Darien (2022) is a sonic fiction about simulation, presenting an alternative history of the Scottish Space Programme, haunted by the ghosts of the British Empire. Justin Barton and Mark Fisher’s On Vanishing Land (2006) is a dreamlike account of a coastal walk that expands into questions of modernity, capitalism, fiction, and the micropolitics of escape. Robin Mackay’s By the North Sea (2021) is a meditation on time, disappearance and loss as heard through the fictions of Lovecraft, Ccru, and the spectre of Dunwich, the city that vanished beneath the waves.

For the opening event, all three artists will join the audience at KARST to discuss the potential of the audio essay as a medium and method that intensifies listening and unsettles the boundaries between existing forms: documentary, music, ambient sound, field recording, radio play….

The audio essays will play in the gallery space at KARST during the following week, in an installation including additional audio archives and related materials.

Click here to book your tickets.

In association with Urbanomic and Hyperdub.

Artist talk: Hardeep Pandhal

Hardeep Pandhal’s luridly iconoclastic digital animations, drawings, textile work and multimedia installations confront the toxic legacies of empire. His art makes direct reference to his Sikh heritage and to the many types of racism that he has experienced. Layered narratives – delivered via rap and elliptical wordplay, comics and video games – excavate tangled histories of post-colonialism and misogyny, reflecting what he calls the ‘exaggerated madness’ of real life.

Hardeep Pandhal‌ ‌(born‌ ‌1985,‌ ‌Birmingham)‌ lives and works in Glasgow. Pandhal‌ studied‌ ‌at‌ ‌Leeds‌ ‌Metropolitan‌ ‌University‌ ‌and‌ ‌The‌ ‌Glasgow‌ ‌School‌ ‌of‌ ‌Art.‌ ‌

Free admission. Book your ticket here.

Artist talk: Mandy El-Sayegh

Mandy El-Sayegh uses latex as a skin to bind, protect and encase paintings, works on paper and installations, and as a solid material for sculptures. A familiar product from her Malaysian birthplace, latex holds El-Sayegh’s collaged fragments together in a coagulated form. Plundering her personal archive of ephemera and hoarded scraps, she layers newspapers, maps, drawings, sweet wrappers, photographs and Arabic and Chinese calligraphy. Grids also recur throughout her work, not least the newspaper sheets used to paper KARST’s floor and walls.

Mandy‌ ‌El-Sayegh‌ ‌(born‌ ‌1985,‌ ‌Selangor,‌ ‌Malaysia)‌ ‌lives‌ ‌and‌ ‌works‌ ‌in‌ ‌London.‌ El-Sayegh‌ ‌studied‌ ‌at‌ ‌the‌ ‌University‌ ‌of‌ ‌Westminster‌ ‌and‌ ‌the‌ ‌Royal‌ ‌College‌ ‌of‌ ‌Art, both London

Free admission. Book your ticket here.

The Big Draw: Movement through Space

Come and join us at KARST for the Big Draw event on Friday 28 October 11-5pm. The Big Draw event at KARST will explore movement, migration, markers of time and collaboration. Be part of our large-scale collaborative drawing and make your mark. You will be using body attachments made by two of our studio artists Anna Boland and Laura Robertson.

The Big Draw is a chance to try something new, have some fun and experiment. You’re invited to draw, make your mark and to test and explore drawing in new ways using our drawing machine and attachments. You can work both individually or collaboratively and you can draw with your family or friends. Open and accessible to all ages or abilities, no previous experience is required. Throughout the day we will be working on a large, 10 metre long drawing to create a series of layered pieces.

It’s a drop in event so you can stay as long as you like.

Funder and Sponsor credit: KARST, Hayward Gallery Touring, Southbank Centre, Arts Council England, The Box, Arts University Plymouth, University of Plymouth, Plymouth City Council, Plymouth Culture.

British Art Show 9: Launch Weekend Curators’ Tour

Starting at KARST in Stonehouse, before moving on to MIRROR, The Levinsky Gallery and The Box near the city centre, join the curators of the British Art Show 9 exhibition, Irene Aristizabal and Hammad Nasar, for an exclusive highlights tour. Transport will be provided from KARST.

Free admission. Booking essential. (now fully booked)

No Soap Radio

No Soap Radio (NSR) is a street photography collective created by a group of friends to share analogue photos of the oddities they encounter daily. The images have no consistent theme, planning, or any order at all: they are purely opportunistic. The thread that draws the group together is skateboarding in Plymouth but NSR looks beyond that to places and characters encountered along the way.

This live event from 5-9pm includes a skate jam and DJ set. Free entry.

 

In the Future We Will

A panel discussion with Ben Borthwick, KARST’s head of Creative Programme and Paula Orrell, coordinator, Visual Arts South West using the framework provided by Speedwell – an Arts Council England and Plymouth Culture commission made by artist’s collective Still/Moving. The work was a response to the complexity of commemorating the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower: challenging accepted histories, behaviours and knowledge systems offers the possibility in this moment to consider, design and activate ‘new’ forms of ‘worlding’.

Dustin Ericksen & Damian Griffiths

Artist and performer Dustin Ericksen brings Light, observed to a close with his Finissage Event ‘The eye ain’t heard, the ear ain’t seen’. With banjo and synthesiser, Ericksen will create improvisational music.

The musical aspect of the performance will be interfered with by two outside elements. First, the photography and light of Damian Griffiths, will trigger changes in the synthesised sound. Simultaneously, Ericksen will attempt to give a didactic explanation of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes the light we see, and other wavelengths, like x-rays and microwaves.

Outlands Tour 6: Ensō Sone

8pm, 12 Nov 2019

An original audio-visual collaboration between Japanese psych band @qujaku_jpn and UK visual artists @impatv.

Developed during a residency in Japan in June 2019, this new production explores ideas of duality. Sound triggers light that in turn creates form via an amalgam of heavy, rhythmic ambience combined with visual projections, lighting and stage design. The resulting union will unfurl as an expansive spectacle to stimulate the senses. Special guests @group_a_band open each night of the tour with a spectacular new AV set.

Ensō – a circular symbol hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. Sone – a unit of loudness; how loud a sound is perceived. Ensō Sone expresses a freedom to create loudness, which marks the starting point for this exciting new collaboration. Further ideas from Japanese Zen practice; of oneness, natural opposites and equilibrium, the spirit of harmonious cooperation, the visible and the invisible, absolute fullness in emptiness, simplicity, completeness, and endlessness are explored.

Lockdown Tarot

Co-commissioned by Visual Arts Plymouth CIC and KARST, Lockdown Tarot is a new fortune-telling performance by John Walter using a brand-new deck of cards that he drew during lockdown using the VR software Tilt Brush. This new tarot deck features images from Walter’s repertoire including allusions to art history, popular culture and politics. Lockdown Tarot responds to the current Covid-19 emergency using Walter’s trademark colour, humour and absurdity. Lockdown Tarot is composed of a minor arcana of four suits – the antibodies, vaccines, receptors and masks – and a higher arcana of 22 picture cards. The tarot is an algorithm, a repertoire of 78 images that can be shuffled and arranged into an infinite range of narrative sequences, and an ideal container for Walter’s epic, maximalist aesthetic. Lockdown Tarot demonstrates Walter’s approach to using hospitality as a device for engaging audiences in his ideas and images. The costume that he wears is a form of drag that is jestered as opposed to gendered. Audiences are empowered to ask him and the tarot anything. This leads to memorable and transformative conversations between strangers.

John Walter is a visual artist working across a diverse range of media including painting, moving image, installation, Virtual Reality and curating. His work is characterised by a disarming use of colour, humour and hospitality. Wellcome and Arts Council England have supported his work, and he was awarded the 2016 Hayward Curatorial Open for Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness. The Arts Council Collection and The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool have collected his work.

Euphrosyne Andrews: Soft Edges, Draw Close book launch

KARST is hosting the book launch for Soft Edges, Draw Close: Materiality in Space. This limited run publication corresponds with Euphrosyne Andrews’ current exhibition in the gallery. The event is hosted in collaboration with First Thursdays by Queer District Collective and Minerva Cafe.

The book presents a body of work by the artist that explores how materials and their subsequent associations shape our interactions within space. Contributions from Owen Hatherley and The Box Plymouth situate the work within the framework of modernist architecture, social histories and politics. An in-conversation between Katie Schwab, Euphrosyne Andrews and Ben Borthwick offers insight into the creative practices and print methodologies that underpin the work.

At 6.45pm there will be an in-conversation between the artist and Ben Borthwick, Head of Creative Programme at KARST. Bar provided by Minerva Cafe.

Entry is free, all welcome.

Book published by Foolscap Editions, creative direction and curation by Daniel Fletcher, design by William Lyall.

Bedwyr Williams’ Booster

Join artist Bedwyr Williams at KARST for a new reading-performance about encounters with architectural models – a recurrent theme of MILQUETOAST, his current exhibition at KARST.

Timings

5:30pm: Doors

6:15pm: Performance (c.20 mins)

7:30pm: Close

Book for the live performance here.

Tickets are free, but due to limited capacity booking is essential for the performance.

Plymouth Arts Cinema will then be hosting a free screening of three films by Bedwyr Williams at 8.30pm. Book for the screening here.