Archive Live Broadcast
21 November, 2-6pm

Join us for a day of in-conversations and presentations by artists-in-residence Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti alongside contributions from invited speakers.

This event is the first in our autumn residency programme that takes The Multiverse as a starting point for research and discussion. With artists-in-residence Essi Kausalainen, Paul Purgas and Erica Scourti and invited speakers, writer and curator Paul Clinton; Irene Revell, curator and Director of Electra; and Dr James Riley, lecturer in English Literature at the University of Cambridge.

Paul Purgas has composed a pre-recorded sound score that will play throughout the event.

2pm Welcome from Wysing Curator, Lotte Juul Petersen

2.05pm An in-conversation between artist Erica Scourti and writer Paul Clinton focussed around ideas of the self, identities, fiction, and stupidity in a fully mediated world, including works introduced by Erica Scourti. Followed by questions and an open discussion.

3.10pm Break with tea and coffee

3.30pm A presentation by James Riley entitled Ghost Noise; a speculative talk looking at some of the links between cybernetics and the paranormal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Q&A with artist Paul Purgas. Followed by questions and an open discussion.

4.35pm Break with tea and coffee

4.45pm A screening of Essi Kausalainen's work, Orchard, 2013, video (HD), duration: 1min 44s.

4.50pm An in-conversation between artist Essi Kausalainen and curator Irene Revell on her work, including the influence of philosopher and physicist Karen Barad. Followed by questions and an open discussion.

5.40pm Drinks reception

6pm Ends

Contributor Biographies

Paul Clinton is assistant editor of Frieze and Frieze Masters magazine. Clinton has written on art and stupidity for over ten years and co-curated the exhibition 'Duh? art and stupidity' which recently opened at Focal Point Gallery, Southend. He has taught on art, stupidity and queer theory at Goldsmiths College and the University of Manchester. In 2013 he edited a special issue of the philosophy and critical theory journal parallax on stupidity, and in 2014 the South London Gallery staged a day-long event around his research on this subject. In the same year he organised the conference Shimmering World, which featured presentations by artists Ed Atkins, David Panos and Hannah Sawtell. His catalogue essays include on the work of artists Bonnie Camplin, and Jacopo Miliani. Previous speaking engagements have taken place at the Frieze Art Fair, ICA, Tate Modern, Whitstable Biennale and Whitechapel Gallery, amongst other venues. He was also a founding member of the band No Bra, co-writing several songs on the album Dance and Walk, and with Patrick Wolf he formed the band Maison Crimenaux.

Essi Kausalainen’s work perceives the world as an organic entity; a chaotic body in which all parts are equally important and makes works in which the space, different species of beings and ‘things’ are approached as performers and partners. Inspired by plant thinking, feminist science studies, new materialisms and quantum physics, Kausalainen creates ambiguous works in the form of gestures and actions. Essi Kausalainen (b. 1979) studied performance art and theory at Turku Arts Academy and the Theatre Academy of Finland. Her work has been exhibited and performed in venues including KIM? Contemporary Art Centre, Riga; Malmö Moderna Museet; Frankfurt Kunstverein; Museum for Contemporary Art Roskilde; Nikolaj Kunsthalle, Copenhagen and Kunstraum Bethanien, Berlin. Essi Kausalainen's residency is supported by The Finnish Institute in London and Frame Visual Art Finland.

Paul Purgas has a multi-disciplinary approach that brings together elements of sound and composition, architecture, industrial design and software programming. Originally trained as an architect and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004, he has since been based in the curatorial department at Arnolfini, Bristol and curated contemporary art and performance projects for Tate Britain, De La Warr Pavillion, Spike Island and Frieze Art Fair. Alongside this he is also the co-founder of Emptyset with James Ginzburg, a project that operates as a meeting point for sound, architecture and performance considering full frequency audio, psychoacoustics and the legacy of Structural/Materialist production. Emptyset have produced installations for Tate Britain and the Architecture Foundation in London, and live performances at Bergen Konsthall, CTM/Transmediale, Kunsthalle Zurich and the Wysing music festival in 2012.

Irene Revell is the Director of Electra, an organisation which curates, commissions and produces projects by artists working across sound, moving image, performance and the visual arts. Through close dialogue with a range of venues and collaborators, Electra presents projects across the UK and internationally. At the heart of their practice is a process-based relationship between artist, curator and audiences, which seeks to give the projects space to find their own rhythm, public outputs, and discourse. Electra's core aim is to foster a dialogue between a range of disciplines of contemporary artistic practice, to provide a platform for debate and engaged, dynamic investigations of urgent social, political and cultural questions. Projects include:Someone Else Can Clean Up This Mess (Flat Time House, 2014-15); Her Noise: Feminisms and the Sonic (Tate Modern, 2012); Sound Escapes (Space 2009); The Wire 25 (2007).

James Riley is Fellow and College Lecturer in English Literature at Girton College, University of Cambridge. He works on 20th and 21st century writing with an emphasis on the Beat writers, counterculture, occulture and the intersection between literature and technology. Recent publications include a multi-volume collection of archival texts linked to the literature and film of the 1960s. James has written on cult film for Vertigo, Monolith and One+One, he has curated film seasons and film tours across the UK and recently featured as part of the Congress of Curious Peoples at Coney Island, New York. Current projects include: Playback Hex, a study of William Burroughs and tape technology and Road Movies, a book site-specific cinema. He is also co-directing The Alchemical Landscape, a research and public engagement project looking at notions of magic and geography. James blogs at Residual Noise and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Erica Scourti draws on a personal biography to explore the notion of a subject aware of herself as caught within a system of techno-social representations, reflecting on questions of post-authenticity, intimacy and connection in a fully mediated world. Her work in video, performance, online and with text has been shown recently in group shows and festivals, Transmediale 15, Haus De Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, (2015), End User, Hayward Project Space, London (2014), Soft Machines, IMPAKT Festival, Utrecht, (2014), P/N/19 Foam, a peripatetic project by Mat Jenner at Project/ Number, London, (2014), Snow Crash, Banner Repeater, London, (2014). She has also presented performances and talks at the ICA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, DRAF and the Southbank Centre.