CIRCA x Goldsmiths

Delighted to be the inaugural recipient of the CIRCA x Goldsmiths scholarship award for the MFA Curating course.

Digital art and culture platform CIRCA and Goldsmiths, University of London have launched the #CIRCAECONOMY Scholarship Programme, funded by the sale of limited edition prints by artists including Ai Weiwei, Patti Smith and David Hockney.

Since launching in October 2020, the #CIRCAECONOMY initiative has circulated over £180,000 into supporting its free public art programme, appearing daily in London’s Piccadilly Circus, Seoul, Tokyo, Milan, Melbourne, New York and LA, while nurturing a more diverse cultural industry that supports emerging creative potential through a series of cash grants and awards. 

Funds are generated through the sale of limited edition artists’ prints sales, with CIRCA commissioning new work from rising and established artists including Ai Weiwei, Cauleen Smith, Eddie Peake, Anne Imhof, Patti Smith, Tony Cokes, Emma Talbot, Vivienne Westwood, James Barnor, David Hockney, and more.

CIRCA Art

On Thursday October 13th, I will be supporting artist Laure Prouvost as part of her CIRCA residency and project, ‘No More Front Tears’.

BROADCASTING GLOBALLY THROUGHOUT OCTOBER 2022, coinciding with Frieze London and CIRCA’s second anniversary, Laure Prouvost will take centre stage on the CIRCA platform with a new 2.5min video work that explores the migration of other-than-humans, poetically navigating and providing deeper context surrounding questions of borders and immigration.

LAUNCHING MID OCTOBER, complementing the global video presentation and in conjunction with Frieze week, Prouvost will activate her first AR experience in Piccadilly Circus, London that brings to life a giant, painterly octopus. Wrapping around the Anteros Statue, she is resting after her long march to London, following a protest gathering of other-than-human compatriots. Marching together, through unscripted encounters between this world’s manifold, they seek to develop infrastructures for deep futurity.
PARTNERING WITH CHOOSE LOVE, who support refugees and displaced people globally, this month’s #CIRCAECONOMY print by Prouvost will power a £5000 donation to the charity.

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Everywhere is Haunted – Sunday 8th January, Cafe OTO

Everywhere is Haunted‘ provides a discourse on the themes of race, gender, queer identity and natural hostile spaces in horror through talks, screenings, live performances and a horror disco. Curated by Dee Sada.

Rewilding by Ric Rawlins

Dee Sada is a London-based musician and curator. She currently performs in Paper Birch with Fergus Lawrie of Urusei Yatsura. The duo released their debut album, ‘morninghairwater’ via TAKUROKU and Reckless Yes records in 2021. Dee has created an eclectic and diverse collection of work over the last 12 years through projects such as percussive noise band, An Experiment On A Bird In The Air Pump, electronic duo Blue On Blue and improv performance bands The Noise Bodies and ORAL ORAL.

Dee is currently studying the MFA Curating course at Goldsmiths, University of London and was awarded the inaugural Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Art (CIRCA) scholarship. She was also awarded a 2022-2023 culture seed grant from Culture Mile London. Her curatorial practice is based on inclusion, diversity, sustainability and community-based engagement. She has recently worked on projects with artists Carolee Schneemann and Laure Prouvost. 

Dee Sada

In Conversation:

Ric Rawlins is the writer and director of the UK’s first folk horror anthology feature film, Rewilding, a trio of tales which take place in the fields, forests and caves of the UK’s wildest haunts. As a writer he’s published Rise of the Super Furry Animals (2015) about the seminal Welsh band, and he’s currently writing a new film about a river-dwelling vampire.

Ric Rawlins

Emma Merkling is an art historian based at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Durham University, specialising in the intersections between art, science, and spiritualism in the long nineteenth century. 

She is co-host of Drawing Blood, a podcast about visual culture, the history of science and medicine, and the macabre. Emma received her PhD from the Courtauld in 2021 for a thesis on spiritualist artist Evelyn De Morgan and science, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Courtauld’s Centre for American Art, University of Stirling, and the Science Museum (London). 

She has just completed a grant project on the scientific photographs of the medium ‘Margery’ Crandon, and is currently working on a book project, with Dr Thomas Hughes, on The Victorian Idyll in Art and Literature: Ecology, Matter, Form, where her contribution focuses on queer/more-than-human desire, ecology, and horror in the photography of Julia Margaret Cameron.

Emma Merkling

Live performance:

The Noise Bodies formed in April 2022 at Cafe OTO and performed an improvised piece inspired by James Tenney’s ‘Saxony’ and a recreation of ‘Noise Bodies’ originally performed by Schneemann and Tenney. The Noise Bodies are Frederick Fuller, Dee Sada, Noel Anderson and Mark Abbott. 

The Noise Bodies

There will also be a zine available on the night and the incredible Burning Witches Records on-site with their vast array of horror vinyl and cassette tapes.

Burning Witches Records is a UK-based record label specialising in forward-thinking electronic and heavy synth music. Born from a love of horror films and electronic music, Burning Witches presents artists that are pushing the boundaries of electronic music and music as a whole package. Opening track to album art to vinyl and cassette colour variants, Burning Witches Records makes every release count.

Teenage Superstars

The plans were inacted; Saturday August 15th at Cafe OTO – an evening dedicated to Grant McPhee’s documentary, Teenage Superstars, conversations with Grant, live performances…it was all happening.

In light of the universe coming to a painful standstill, there will be an online screening and live chat with Grant and musicians such as Duglas T Stewart from BMX Bandits and Eugene Kelly from The Vaselines which I will host via my humble Twitter account: @deesada1 at 6pm GMT on Saturday May 2nd.

The film will be available to stream via the Raindance Film Festival website.

And the chat will start on Twitter.

More musicians will be announced…See you there x

 

A Life Between Two Islands, Cafe Oto, October 6th and 7th

Screen Shot 2018-07-03 at 11.49.26
A still from Peter Davis’ 1965 insightful documentary, Immigrants. The film is a fascinating examination of post-war migrant communities in Britain. Through a series of interviews with immigrants who had recently moved to the UK, we’re given insights into the role race and immigration played in mid-1960s British society.
I have worked with Peter on a few events at Café OTO as he has made a number of documentaries on RD Laing and he was a speaker at our Dialectics of Liberation Reconvened event in 2016.
We will be screening the film at our Stuart Hall event at Café OTO in October.
More details and a full line-up soon!