Young creatives living in South East London this week launch a free to watch unique online exhibition, Visions as Our Exile, showcasing ambitious new audio-visual pieces on Friday 29 January, screening back-to-back at 6, 7 and finally at 8pm. The exhibition is a result of Open Source Collaborations, a virtual arts project launched in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic by Foreign Body Productions and the Albany, which connects emerging artists with mentors in order to help them realise new ideas and work across different media. In spite of the challenges presented by the pandemic, this new community of artists has met weekly via regular video calls to collaborate and develop their work.
The exhibition will showcase the results of this collaboration, with five original short works spanning subjects including migration, mental health, activism, the meaning of home and a psychedelic sea shanty. Providing a vital creative outlet for young people, who are disproportionately affected by the pandemic, each piece is shaped by this challenging moment in history whilst also providing a much-needed creative outlet. The second round of the programme, which ran across November and December, saw new work produced in the mediums of radio play, short film, performance poetry, dramatic monologue and music.
Project Leader, Luke Kulukundis said: “These pieces aspire to create a sense of hope and ambition for artists and audiences alike; that we can still form new communities, we can still create ambitious work that can transcend our reality whilst taking a lot from the process, no matter how remote and virtual it needs to be.”
Stones In Hand ~ Mo’Min Swaitat, Luke Kulukundis and Amy Douglas-Morris.
Stones in Hand is a surreal short film that draws on the artist’s experiences as a Palestinian Bedouin who moved from the West Bank to London and their memories of a childhood spent between weddings and intifadas (popular uprisings).
There ~ Ben Woodward and Rory Edmonds.
There is a short poetic-visual anthology charting a young man’s return to the foggy moorland wilderness he grew up alongside, and the people he left behind with it. Our psychogeographer is Ben, an arts operations worker furloughed into limbo. Over backdrops of dark and white he traverses themes of displacement, liberation, grief and solidarity.
It May Never Happen ~ Jessica Bailey, Matty Mancey-Jones and Jacqueline Lipman.
Backed into a corner, immovable object meets unstoppable force. Every day is a challenge just to stay in the room as your friend excitedly shows you her new London pad. Will the OCD continue to call the shots, triggering you deeply, or will the new therapy save your friendship? A multi-faceted look about living with OCD, with you in the leading role.
Lowlands ~ Tommy Hearne and Charles Stooke.
Lowlands is a folk composition written about the loss of Tommy’s parents, Phil and Nita Hearne, at the beginning of 2020. It is a modern sea shanty with psychedelic influences and includes a spoken word section performed by actor and close family friend Dean Williamson.
The Secret Anti-Capitalistic Diary of Korinne K Peterpot ~ Heloise Thual, Louis Grace and Will Stevens.
The Secret Anti Capitalistic Diary Of Korinne K. Peterpot is an audio monologue introducing Korinne K. Peterpot, a young anti-capitalist activist who wishes to once and for all destroy capitalism. Inspired by the character K. present in Franz Kafka’s novels, Korinne K. Peterpot faces the anonymous, overpowerful, abstract force which is Capitalism. A force that slowly consumed her parents and extinguished their political fervour.
You can view the pieces at this link: https://www.thealbany.org.uk/shows/visions-as-our-exile/