Somerset House Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

How can cuteness be used to sugar coat difficult messages? 

In this episode we join another artist commissioned for the Somerset House exhibition CUTE, Brooklyn based Sean-Kierre Lyons, to explore how cute characters have been used to tackle sensitive ideas from the middle ages on.  In her practice, Sean-Kierre brings the grotesque and the cute together to approach challenging themes. Much of her work is inspired by cartoon animation, specifically its roots in racist caricature. For her Somerset House installation Sean-Kierre created a dragon-like gargoyle called Benevolence, one of nine protector gods she is developing, inspired by the 90s cartoon ‘Gargoyles’

Here Sean-Kierre exposes the double edged sword of cute, looking at how cute characters have been used to mask malicious intent, as in the case of the animated characters used in war propaganda, as well as to deliver moral reminders, as far back as medieval masonry. She talks to animator of the Big Blue, Gyimah Gariba about how he uses cuteness to demonstrate the vulnerability of earth’s climate and art historian Dr Janetta Rebold Benton explains how gargoyles could be thought to be a form of cartoons of the middle ages.

Contains strong language from the start. 

CUTE: An Exhibition Exploring the Irresistible Force of Cuteness in Contemporary Culture, at Somerset House, 25 Jan - 14 Apr 2024.
Principal Partner: Sanrio

Producer - Alannah Chance
Exec Producer - Eleanor Ritter-Scott
Series presenter - Laurent John

Hannah Diamond reflects on the transformative powers of cute

Cute aesthetics have exploded into pop culture. We use filters to make ourselves look like cute cats, dot our texts with hearts and smiley faces and our phones ping with alerts from cartoon animals reminding us to study French or change energy suppliers. Brands have been using cute images to sell us things since the dawn of advertising but with the rise of social media we are increasingly becoming the brand, as we seek to cutify our online and IRL selves. Over the last ten years the music collective and label PC Music have been playing with the aesthetics of pop music, internet culture and consumerism to suggest that artifice doesn’t need to be inauthentic. Artist and musician Hannah Diamond is one of the founding members, known for her hyper-real, hyper-pop art direction and an ear for sugary hooks. For CUTE, an exhibition at Somerset House, Hannah was commissioned to curate a room in the style of a girl’s sleepover accompanied by a stream of music videos that embody the power of cute. In this episode we go deeper into the ways pop music and cuteness intersect, celebrating the ways plasticity can be liberating rather than limiting. Hannah talks to fellow label affiliate Hayden Dunham, the brains behind the Hey QT project, about self transformation through world building and Dazed journalist Gunseli Yalcinkaya explains why the internet has such an enduring obsession with cute.

CUTE: An Exhibition Exploring the Irresistible Force of Cuteness in Contemporary Culture, at Somerset House, 25 Jan - 14 Apr 2024.
Principal Partner: Sanrio

Producer - Alannah Chance
Exec Producer - Eleanor Ritter-Scott
Series presenter - Laurent John

How can the soft body challenge social hierarchies?

We turn our gaze towards the soft life of the body and unpack new ways of thinking about embodiment in artistic practice with Somerset House studios artists Florence Peake on radical softness in somatics, choreographer and writer Dr Martin Hargreaves on the history of protest through softness in dance, Ilona Sagar on rendering bodies hard through architecture and disabled film maker Jameisha Prescod on the colonial history of black pain.

Soft Life: Experiments In New Ways of Being

Soft Life is part of a growing number of movements challenging the way we work. How can soft approaches in art help us rethink our relationship to time, the body and the earth?

In March 2020, the non-stop nature of our 24/7 world came to a stop. For many in the Western world, it allowed us a space to reconsider the way we value our time and with that our relationship to work. Now, amidst the strikes and the resignations, a new movement  is emerging called ‘Soft Life’. which seeks to sidestep the values of hustle culture for slowness and ease.  How can softness open up new ways of being in the world and create different types of value? Could it be a way of healing our relationship with the natural world at a point of crisis?

In this four-part series we take the idea of ‘soft life’ as a launch off point to explore alternative ideas around work, time, the body and ecology emanating from Somerset House and beyond. We talk to radical thinkers, artists and writers, who are carving out these new ways of being in the body, centring the soft and the in-between, finding space for rest and looking at ways of expanding time beyond the clock.

Soft Life is produced by Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
With sound by Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig 

How can we make time free?
We contemplate different ways of experiencing time beyond the linear, with Somerset House Studios artist Shenece Oretha on transforming time through the practice of listening, sociologist Judy Wajcman on unpicking progress from speed in the digital sphere and psychologist Dr Ruth Ogden on how our experience of time is relational and whether it’s possible to conceive of ‘free time’ in a modern world.

Soft Life: Experiments In New Ways of Being

Soft Life is part of a growing number of movements challenging the way we work. How can soft approaches in art help us rethink our relationship to time, the body and the earth?

In March 2020, the non-stop nature of our 24/7 world came to a stop. For many in the Western world, it allowed us a space to reconsider the way we value our time and with that our relationship to work. Now, amidst the strikes and the resignations, a new movement  is emerging called ‘Soft Life’. which seeks to sidestep the values of hustle culture for slowness and ease.  How can softness open up new ways of being in the world and create different types of value? Could it be a way of healing our relationship with the natural world at a point of crisis? 

In this four-part series we take the idea of ‘soft life’ as a launch off point to explore alternative ideas around work, time, the body and ecology emanating from Somerset House and beyond. We talk to radical thinkers, artists and writers, who are carving out these new ways of being in the body, centring the soft and the in-between, finding space for rest and looking at ways of expanding time beyond the clock.

Soft Life is produced by Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
With sound by Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig 
This episode includes the following sound works by Shenece Oretha:
Conspiracy
Listening Wholes
at/Tribute
Ah So It Go, Ah No So it Go, Go So!
Who Can’t Hear Must Feel 

Our ways of working aren’t working. How can art offer new ways of being outside of the values of hustle culture? 

We explore changing attitudes to work post-pandemic and re-evaluate the importance of rest as a creative space. We hear from Bayo Akomolafe about the fertile spaces of the cracks, Black Power Naps on rest as a radical act and we lie down to contemplate art in Somerset House with artist Raquel Meseguer Zafe, after her workshop for this year’s Hyper Functional Ultra Healthy programme.

Soft Life: Experiments In New Ways of Being

Soft Life is part of a growing number of movements challenging the way we work. How can soft approaches in art help us rethink our relationship to time, the body and the earth?

In March 2020, the non-stop nature of our 24/7 world came to a stop. For many in the Western world, it allowed us a space to reconsider the way we value our time and with that our relationship to work. Now, amidst the strikes and the resignations, a new movement  is emerging called ‘Soft Life’. which seeks to sidestep the values of hustle culture for slowness and ease.  How can softness open up new ways of being in the world and create different types of value? Could it be a way of healing our relationship with the natural world at a point of crisis?

In this four-part series we take the idea of ‘soft life’ as a launch off point to explore alternative ideas around work, time, the body and ecology emanating from Somerset House and beyond. We talk to radical thinkers, artists and writers, who are carving out these new ways of being in the body, centring the soft and the in-between, finding space for rest and looking at ways of expanding time beyond the clock.

Soft Life is produced by Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
With sound by Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig 

A new limited series for the Somerset House Podcast

Soft Life is part of a growing number of movements challenging the way we work. How can soft approaches in art help us rethink our relationship to time, the body and the earth? 

In March 2020, the non-stop nature of our 24/7 world came to a stop. For many in the Western world, it allowed us a space to reconsider the way we value our time and with that our relationship to work. Now, amidst the strikes and the resignations, a new movement  is emerging called ‘Soft Life’. which seeks to sidestep the values of hustle culture for slowness and ease.  How can softness open up new ways of being in the world and create different types of value? Could it be a way of healing our relationship with the natural world at a point of crisis?  
In this four-part series we take the idea of ‘soft life’ as a launch off point to explore alternative ideas around work, time, the body and ecology emanating from Somerset House and beyond. We talk to radical thinkers, artists and writers, who are carving out these new ways of being in the body, centring the soft and the in-between, finding space for rest and looking at ways of expanding time beyond the clock.  

Soft Life is produced by Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
With sound by Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig

Artist Leila Dear explores whether geometry could be a universal language 

What do our attempts to communicate with extra-terrestrials say about us?  Jerwood artist in residence, Leila Dear uses geometry as a way of thinking about interdependence and non-human design.  In this episode of The Process she explores whether geometry could be used as a ‘Lingua Cosmica’, a universal language by which to communicate with other intelligences beyond earth.  Given the prevalence of geometric patterning within the natural world and the universal limitations of physics, could geometry provide a way of relating to other minds without preferencing our own?   
She puts the idea to Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI institute (the Search for Extra-terrestrial Life) who is sure we will find evidence of aliens within the next 20 years.  This led Leila to reflect on the other forms of mind we already share the earth with. She is joined by science writer Philip Ball to discuss how a better understanding of animal and plant intelligence might help us de-centre the human.  
 
The Process
The creative process is inspired by worlds beyond itself.  The Somerset House podcast series 'The Process' brings those worlds together, platforming the big conversations which go on to inspire new work. 

Drawing on our creative community on site and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows one artist as they explore an idea from their practice to see where it ends up.  We hear their journey from the studio on, as they invite other thinkers to discuss an idea that has come out of a work in progress and help shape where it might go next. 

Producer: Alannah Chance  
Series Presenter: Laurent John  
Theme music: Ka Baird  
Additional music: Aylu (Mana Records) Lord Tusk 
Mastered by: Nick Ryan  
Produced as part of the Creators Programme 2022  
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation 

The artist Libby Heaney spent many years as a quantum physicist researching the concept of quantum entanglement, the way objects can affect each other even when separated by vast distances, or what Einstein called ‘spooky action at a distance’.  It’s an idea that challenges our assumptions about the physical world and for Libby it offers up fertile ways of rethinking old hierarchies. In this podcast we take up this mystery and dance with it, seeing where metaphors of entanglement can take us. Firstly Libby talks to biologist Susanne Wedlich about slime and how this shape shifting substance can help us get closer to the quantum world. She then sits down with deep listener and dream expert IONE, the partner and lifelong collaborator of Deep listening pioneer Pauline Oliveros. IONE and Libby meditate on how a practice of quantum listening can entangle us with both the physical and the metaphysical world, including a connection beyond death.

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Libby Heaney is a London based artist with a PhD in Quantum Physics, who works across moving image, performance, installation and physical media, usually combining these with advanced technologies such as machine learning, game engines & quantum computing - a new type of computer that processes information on particles following the weird laws of quantum physics. 

Heaney is widely known as the first person to make art with quantum computers. Her artwork Ent-, commissioned by Light Art Space, 2022, has been exhibited across continents and received substantial international press in places like Der Welt, Wallpaper* and Spike Art.  

Before retraining as an artist at Central St. Martins, London, Heaney completed a PhD in Quantum Information Science at the Uninversity of Leeds and led her own research at the University of Oxford, publishing around 20 papers on the topic of quantum entanglement. She won the HSBC and Intitute of Physics, UK, Very Early Career Woman Physicist of the year in 2008. 

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The Process
The creative process is inspired by worlds beyond itself.  The Somerset House podcast series 'The Process' brings those worlds together, platforming the big conversations which go on to inspire new work. 

Drawing on our creative community on site and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows one artist as they explore an idea from their practice to see where it ends up.  We hear their journey from the studio on, as they invite other thinkers to discuss an idea that has come out of a work in progress and help shape where it might go next. 

Producer: Alannah Chance
Series Presenter: Laurent John
Theme music: Ka Baird
Additional music: Pauline Oliveros and IONE, Aylu (Mana Records) Carmen Jaci and Irama Gema 
Mastered by: Nick Ryan 
Produced as part of the Creators Programme 2022 
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation 

Film maker Morgan Quaintance is interested in what AI can teach us about being human. For his commission for our digital platform Channel, he set out to explore divergent cultural attitudes to AI between the UK and Japan. But when he started putting out requests for interviews, he was met with a wall of silence.  Public institutions, AI developers, robotics companies and schools all seemed unwilling to reply and the film couldn't be made. Frustrated about the stonewalling he'd experienced, he started to think more about the process and what this says about the development of AI. Why was there such overwhelming silence from companies developing this technology? What does this say about some of the moral questions that go into its formation?  Morgan is joined by The Guardian’s tech journalist Alex Hern and AI artist Nouf Aljowaysir to try to find out.  

Morgan Quaintance is a London-based artist and writer. His moving image work has been shown and exhibited widely at festivals and institutions including: MOMA, New York; Mcevoy Foundaton for the Arts, San Francisco; Konsthall C, Sweden; David Dale, Glasgow; European Media Art Festival, Germany; Alchemy Film and Arts Festival, Scotland. Over the past ten years, his critically incisive writings on contemporary art, aesthetics and their socio-political contexts, have featured in publications including Art Monthly, the Wire, and the Guardian, and helped shape the landscape of discourse and debate in the UK.  

The Process
The creative process is inspired by worlds beyond itself.  The Somerset House podcast series 'The Process' brings those worlds together, platforming the big conversations which go on to inspire new work.  

Drawing on our creative community on site and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows one artist as they explore an idea from their practice to see where it ends up.  We hear their journey from the studio on, as they invite other thinkers to discuss an idea that has come out of a work in progress and help shape where it might go next.  

Producer: Alannah Chance  
Series Presenter: Laurent John  
Theme music: Ka Baird  
Additional music: Harry Murdoch   
Mastered by: Nick Ryan  
Produced as part of the Creators Programme 2022  
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation 

Elizabeth Bernholtz, aka Gazelle Twin, has had paranormal experiences since her early childhood. Ever since she’s been both terrified and thrilled by the occult, gripped by stories of poltergeist possession and famous hauntings. Fresh off the back of her commission for The Horror Show at Somerset House, Gazelle Twin is getting back into the writing process for her next album which explores her long held fascination with ghosts.  We join her as she considers what it would mean to take these stories seriously and to harness her fear as a creative fuel. She talks to artist Mark Leckey, also inspired by the supernatural, about how he uses samples as a form of haunting and how art can be a form of self-exorcism.  Ghost hunter Innes Smith helps unpack the hauntings she experienced in her childhood home.

The Process
The creative process is inspired by worlds beyond itself.  The Somerset House podcast series 'The Process' brings those worlds together, platforming the big conversations which go on to inspire new work.  

Drawing on our creative community on site and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows one artist as they explore an idea from their practice to see where it ends up.  We hear their journey from the studio on, as they invite other thinkers to discuss an idea that has come out of a work in progress and help shape where it might go next.  

Producer: Alannah Chance 
Series Presenter: Laurent John 
Theme music: Ka Baird 
Mastered by: Nick Ryan 
Produced as part of the Creators Programme 2022 
Supported by The Rothschild Foundation