hackney showroom

Within the matrix of hetero-patriarchy Icarus was suitably punished (death by drowning) for he did not head the instructions of The Father. Bad boy. Yawn. You however, through a poiesis of queer(ed) futility, radiated the knowledge that something is created through a departure from, or failure to adhere to, hetero-patriarchal scripts.

We too have wanted more, refused instruction, scorched our wings and fallen. But we have not drowned. We are awash in an infinite ocean of potential. An Icarian Sea.

I see you.

You messaged me the other day with this quote (after witnessing a performance from Nicholas Tee); “No satisfaction whatever at any time... There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching...” - flying or swimming - “...and makes us more alive than the others.” The quote is from the late choreographer, Martha Graham.

As I watched you manifest your fingers as feathers the transformation was choreographic and outright. I no longer saw fingers, I saw the dance of feather tipped wings in flight. I saw blood fall from your brow. I saw the damage from previous flights.

I remembered and felt that we are not drowning and our unrest reaps its own rewards in our Life.


Joseph Morgan Schofield, yesterday I dreamt of flying. Photo by Jemima Yong.

I knew you were in the room but I forgot. I was awaiting your entrance and then I remembered (you have always been here). I had just finished speaking with you. I knew what to expect yet still your presence evaded us. Present yet absent from view like so much of our non-binary cultural and history, slowly bleeding through. Quietly, resolutely authoring attention and futures.

As the first drop of (your) blood dispersed on, into and through (it’s a spectrum) the white barrier obscuring any view of your body from us; I remembered the missing, I remembered their trace.

Specifically I remembered the missing Ana Mendieta, recalling the traces and Body Tracks of where flesh once was. I thought about the invisible, monumental grief which occupies the location of loss. What have we lost? What are we loosing? And in a state of searching what will we find beyond it?

The boldest bloodstain permeated at mouth height, silently screaming. A sharp intake of breath and digitally you spoke:

Mining Mountains

Our Ore
Wild Silence

Mother Bent

You stretched time through pitch, pace and loop. We went deep. Deep into the Moors.

Iron rich,
menstruation led.

Northern (m)others wept.

The future is not female. Our bodies remain invisible.

I hear you and remember that our pasts have seeded our futures and that we are here to tend and grow.


Alicia Radage, M, 2018. Photo by Jemima Yong.

In numerous creation myths the Golem is an anthropomorphic being, magically created from inanimate material (usually clay or dust) by the Divine or those closely related to it. The Golem is matter without form, body without soul. The Golem is imperfect. The raison d'etre of the Golem is servitude. We are all Golems beneath Capitalist, Nation State rule.

I M M O R (T) A L I T Y. Bring the Anarchy.

As your golemesque mask quickly erodes you refuse any position of servitude. YOU bring forth form from the clay though the actions and intentions of your body. You forge the phallus and leave it trivial in your wake.

A forbidden fruit becomes form without matter as you tether it, creating cartographies with string and clay.

I M M O R (T) A L I T Y.

You shed your face once and for all. You have turned the Golem back into clay. How can we convince our siblings to do the same?

I remember that NONE ARE FREE UNTIL ALL ARE FREE. I remember where we are and sigh.


Eunjung Kim, Temporal Fragments,  2018. Photo by Jemima Yong.

Nerve endings are concentrated in our hands so that we can feel the slightest variations in texture, pressure & temperature and according to philosophies of reflexology; pressure points corresponding to all our major organs and bodily systems are located in the hands and wrists. In numerous faiths the hand is a symbol of protection and healing.

As you kneaded the glass shards into the cement with your palms, a fine dust rose, visible in the beam of the spotlight. I thought about razor edges of tiny particles and my mirror neurons fired, yet I remained indifferent for it appeared that you did as well.

What happens to ones psyche when one engages the entire body through sharp, focalised pressure and micro piercing of the hands?

Through constant manipulations of the shards you flattened the mass (your hands did their protective work) before walking, kneeling and laying naked on the glass. I remember the continuous scrapping and clinking of the glass-on-cement as a drawn sonic ode to things that shatter.

I remembered we are sensitive. I remembered, we are all in need of healing.


Hellen Burrough, 2018. Photo by Jemima Yong.

The first step in manifesting desire is imagining. The second step is the focusing of intent. You imagined a future beyond global capitalism, hetero-patrichary, white supremacy & coloniality. Together we must focus our intent. Yet these technologies of magic alone will not cease the systems that enslaves us.

As above. So Below. Everything is relative.

In executing a couplet of performances (performance lecture & ritual performance), you facilitated a straddling of the intellectual and the intuitive. In leading ritual under a waxing crescent moon you positioned us between cycles of banishing and manifesting.

When Persephone, Daughter of Demeter (Goddess of All That Grows), ate pomegranate seeds from the hand of Hades (God of the Dead) the seasons were born, she fell in love and happy became Queen of The Underworld. Forevermore Persephone would move between the worlds. Goddess above, Queen below.

As we shared in Persephone’s ritual we acknowledged a sacred truth. We must move between worlds, learning to thrive in all. Our intentions to dismantle hetero, white, patriarchal politics of coloniality will not manifest overnight and they will not manifest as absolute. We must thrive here as well, as Queens in the dark. We will thrive here as well, Goddesses of Light.


Anni Movsisyan, Ritual for Renewal, 2018. Photo by Jemima Yong.

Alicia Radage’s practice spans Performance, Photography and Digital Collage. Their work has been shown across the U.K., Europe, Latin America and India and they have been supported by The British Council. They have undertaken residencies across the U.K., Brazil and India. Radage collaborates with a number of arts collectives, has close collaborations with individual artists and has curated a number of events in the U.K.

M works to seep through our silencing of queered bodies. Wading through the visible, the invisible and what exists in between, M paints images and soundscapes in an attempt to find other ways of knowing.

Hellen Burrough is an artist and producer living and working in London, UK. Hellen works intimately and violently with her own body as material, making live performance work to explore the transgressive feminine body and examine ideas of ritual, pain and healing.

A fairy tale smashed up and expectations shattered.

Our glittering future, broken up and razor sharp.

In a room full of shattered glass shards, a body works to make peace with the pieces left behind.

“My artistic practice is based in making rituals, presentations, illustrations, charms, garments and music that aim to explore alternate versions of how we can be in this world. I fold the past, present and future into each other by revisiting herstories, forms of knowledge and practices that have either been purposefully erased or forgotten as we try to survive and resist the oppressive structures we are being forced to live with.” 
Anni Movsisyan

"A study of a West Asian Diasporan's use of magical practices in the early 21st century"

Pardis is a Herstory Teacher from an optimistic future that is borne of a radical shift in peoples' ways of thinking. Pardis will present their Herstorical research on a particular 21st century artist's practices of growth and resistance against the violent world she found herself in, in order to learn more about how their world came to be.

Ritual for Renewal invites participants to eat and drink from a shared pomegranate. We will take a moment to reflect, let go of that which our hearts and minds no longer need to hold onto, and plant seeds of intentions, whether they be personal, collective, political, metaphysical, etc. The choice of fruit aligns with the season and is inspired by the Tree of Life, which has been represented by the pomegranate in West Asian cultures. Ritual for Renewal is a performance with a limited capacity.

Eunjung Kim, a Korean artist based in London. Kim’s practice centres on the process of becoming - the discovery of a sense of agency outside of the limits of social reality and the stability of identity. Through relational textures and encounters, Kim questions the relationship between the machinery of repression and the realm of freedom that erupts within difference. Kim has performed at The Photographers’ Gallery, Limehouse Town Hall, and Steakhouse Live Festival at Artsadmin and Live Art Development Agency, London and Green on Red Gallery, Ireland.

Inspired by the ancient East Asians' shamanistic myth, Mago, Temporal Fragments open the myth and will seek a fragment of it. Desiring ultimate present of the myth that is not affected by existing historical and social power structure. In the present of doing and sharing this work the mythology fractures and decays the chain of signification and the trace forms a new temporal map of geographic formations without any boundaries.

thinking about icarus and deleuze and gender and my father. this is a leap of faith. the point is never to fly.

joseph morgan schofield is a performance artist working across the body, text and endurance work.