A---Z, Always Coming Home, Chapter 4

Free, booking required – link below.

Babak Ahteshamipour, Jennifer Martin, Philomène Pirecki, Saint Abdullah and Abbas Zahedi

The fourth and last chapter in the A---Z programmed series Always Coming Home.

Starting with the 2021 moving image by Babak Ahteshamipour, Post-coded Thoughts on the Never-upcoming Foreshadowed Li(f)e, a dystopian machinima conceived with The Sims presenting a world populated by A.I., avatars, algorithms, and programs where human beings have vanished. Followed by Jennifer Lauren Martin new performance reading, a little choke, where after a heated argument, sees three characters and their frinedship challenged, leaving one of them, June, gasping for air after a betrayal.

After a short break, Philomène Pirecki will present an immersive live set followed by Saint Abdullah and Abbas Zahedi’s performance.

A---Z, Always Coming Home series is the development of a recent research on the affect of visual and sound in narrative. Thinking of change and flux as part of speculative futures and worldbuilding as ways of expressing current socio-political issues and expanding from there to potential other paths.

In line with this proposition, language, and other forms of expression, from the bodily to sound and the non-descriptive, are given a platform to create new ways of thinking and working together: explorations and considerations of embodied practices as political disruptions.

Additionally, references and inspirations are worth mentioning: such as the “title-hommage” to the 1985 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, where we follow the Kesh people, a cultural group who live in the distant future long after modern society has collapsed. And also the work by Pauline Oliveros with the Deep Listening method aiming to explore expanded consciousness – “Acoustic space is where time and space merge as they are articulated by sound.”

A---Z, Always Coming Home is a new series of events for Matt’s Gallery, programmed by exploratory producing platform A---Z (Anne Duffau), as a development of a recent research on the affect of visual and sound in narrative, featuring works by:

Babak Ahteshamipour, Bliss Carmxn, Sarah Howe & JJ Chan, utopian_realism, Matt Carter, Vivienne Griffin, Stefan Jovanović, Billy Klotsa, Tarek Lakhrissi, Jennifer Martin, Josèfa Ntjam, Philomene Pirecki, Harold Offeh, Emily Pope, Saint Abdullah, Fuyuhiko Takata, Josh Woolford, Abbas Zahedi, A---Z.

A---Z aims to impose a collaborative, inclusive and critical practice/praxis – this demands a responsibility to decolonise programmes, build on positivity towards/and inclusivity in terms of gender and race discourses, and demonstrate openness, intersectional, responsive and critical juxtaposition methods.

Always Coming Home is supported by a Research Project Grant from the Royal College of Art, London.