Ugly Duck Bermondsey announces the return of their flagship programme @Disturbance on November 10 & 11. Championing LGBTQIA+ performance, video and digital artists, the live events will be accompanied by a simultaneous livestream enabling audiences unable to travel to experience @Disturbance in full effect.
Creative Director of Ugly Duck and founder of @Disturbance Deen Atger says: “At @Disturbance we find and nurture the talents of tomorrow – bold and forward-thinking artists deconstructing boundaries and paving the way for totally new aesthetics. Each year @Disturbance evolves and we’re excited to welcome new artists into our growing network”.
Ugly Duck is currently celebrating a decade of revitalising underused buildings and supporting marginalised artists. Established in October 2012, the organisation has transformed a spacious, empty Victorian warehouse in SE1 into a thriving, creative hub. Over 1500 artists and arts collectives have collaborated with Ugly Duck over the past 10 years.
@Disturbance 2022 artists include Gisou Golshani originally from Iran now London-based, Gisou will create a multi-sensory, immersive performance and installation via ritualistic movement, visuals and sound. Gisou also references the Bittern; a bird that has inspired the artist previously, the theme continuing in this forthcoming work.
For Joy Yaa Kincaid, the intersection of race and gender is the focus of their multi-faceted work which at @Disturbance, will encompass both performance and video art. Their practice embodies their uncompromising aesthetic and sensitive individuality.
River Cao revisits the marginalised queer experience of growing up in small-town southern China. Now London-based, River will create a series of self-narrative spaces at @Disturbance in their performance I found a dead bird, to rethink emotions of grief. River has previously presented work internationally and in London at the Saatchi Gallery and the ICA.
Singapore-based interdisciplinary artist Khairullah Rahim presents their UK debut Buah Dahsyat (Fantastic Fruits), a short film. His practice explores strategies of resourcefulness for survival in environments under surveillance. Khairullah’s work has been shown all over the world and in the UK, at the Barbican.
Noam Youngrak Son’s video piece Yummy Body Truck, about a fictional food truck selling edible human body parts, introduces Noam’s work to the UK for the first time. Based in Ghent, Noam has previously shown work with the Queer Institute of Ecology in Amsterdam.
Olivia Morrison is a queer disabled video artist. New work Hug Me Properly follows the lives of a young, queer community on a night out. They discuss how loved ones and lives during the pandemic have changed and how their community is more important than ever. Olivia was recently on the jury for Iris Prize, an international LGBTQ+ Film Festival. Her past works includes Cyber Sex, a documentary giving a platform to digital sex workers and short film Révérence, tackling themes such as mental health, class and LGBTQ+ rights.
Video artist Sandrine Schaefer frequently presents performance art installations using repetition, duration and multisensory elements. @Disturbance will show a new performance made for camera titled Simple Relations No. 4. Sandrine’s work has frequently been shown in Chicago as well as across other US states.
Orlando Myxx is an Italian-born, London-based artist whose practice encompasses photography, ?lm-making and performance. At @Disturbance they screen The Plastic Drag, a visual and sound work investigating how a new wave of underrepresented gender-non-conforming and diverse drag artists are redefining the art of drag and its subversive potential.
Sophie Hoyle’s video art explores post-colonial, queer, feminist, critical psychiatry and disability. They will be showing Hyperacusis at @Disturbance: Two films about mental health, trauma, gender and sexuality, access to healthcare and transcultural psychiatry. Sophie’s work has previously been shown at Newcastle’s Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, London’s Science Gallery and the Arnolfini, Bristol as well as internationally.
Ukrainian artist Yana Bachynska works with film, sculpture, performance and public art. For @Disturbance their film Tovarystvo Sekta tells a story of an unconventional group of friends who live in a common space. They experience daily audio hallucinations, which are messages from a future where a queer utopia has come.
Talia Beale’s practice dissects the process of society’s inner dichotomy through the lens of a queer woman of colour navigating her twenties, existing in spaces such as Central Saint Martins when their home is a block of flats in Tottenham. For @Disturbance, Talia presents To Trudge in Zundon exploring how filmmaking could subvert ideas about housing estates and address new voices, specifically creative, queer kids who live in blocks of flats.
10-11th November, 2022 at Ugly Duck, Bermondsey & Online
7pm – 10pm / £5 – £10
