Movements from the Margins
Turner Contemporary
30 August, 2024
Presented by People Dem Collective and Diasporas Now at the Turner Contemporary, Movements from the Margins is a cross-diasporic celebration of art, music, dance, and community organising as collective spiritual practice.
From record labels Touching Bass (Errol Anderson and Alex Rita) and PRAH Recordings (Tony Njoku and Donna Thompson), Movements from the Margins resident artists (Ray Felix Carter and Ilā Kamalagharan, Sola, and Yewande Adeniran, selected via national open call), healing workshops and film screenings (including multidisciplinary artists Rieko Whitfield, Ebun Sodipo, Peter Spanjer), a panel talk hosted by guest of honour Lisa Anderson with representatives from People Dem Collective, Diasporas Now, and Touching Bass, and curated nourishment bringing Afro-Caribbean flavours to the Margate seaside (by Dee’s Table and Kromanti Rum).
Ebun Sodipo, “Celeste: She of the Sea”
Movements from the Margins Lineup
Musical Performances:
Errol and Alex Rita are the multidisciplinary artist, DJ, curatorial duo and co-founders of Touching Bass. Founded in 2016, the South London-based community, club night, NTS Radio staple, record label, concert series and curatorial studio has slow-cooked to become one of the UK’s most respected platforms and a modern-day, musical movement – with a strong emphasis on creating experiences that feel like home; rich in feeling, intention and community spirit. Touching Bass will headline Movements from the Margins, turning Turner Contemporary into a playground for self expression and sonic exploration.
Movements from the Margins Residents
Movements from the Margins Residents Ray Felix Carter and ILĀ, Sola, and Yewande Adeniran were selected via national call out for primarily sound-based interpretations of the ethos of improvisation, intuition and experimentation to nurture alternative cultural discourses. In addition to performing at Turner Contemporary, the selected artists will receive a week-long, on-site residency at PRAH Recordings’ fully-equipped music studio in Margate.
ILĀ (Ilā Kamalagharan) and Ray Felix Carter
ILĀ (Ilā Kamalagharan) and Ray Felix Carter explore and nurture what it means to collaborate as people who are trans(ing) from different directions – using loop pedals, soundscapes, quantum controllers, ritualistic movement, spoken word and chanting, choral textures and live electronics to tenderly navigate the constellations of difference and sameness between them.
Sola is a South London native that pushes the boundaries of alternative R&B and classical music with her genre-bending soundscapes. Growing up as a classically trained pianist, Sola challenges stereotypical perceptions of classical music and fuses it with traditionally Black genres – exploring music that has been historically inaccessible for people of colour, and reclaiming it to create space for those who feel unseen.
Yewande Adeniran is a Margate and Lewisham-based multidisciplinary artist, writer, mentor and academic with a focus on fusing together global drum-heavy sonics and abstract left-field electronics. Their performance weaves local field recordings and news excerpts of the "far right" versus "polite Britishness” – with references to subcultures from ska and grunge, to white-washed 00s dance music as a sonic, anthropological portrait of current-day Margate.
PRAH Recordings started off 10 years ago to release contemporary classical and experimental music, and to work with artists who exist on the weirder fringes of pop music. For Movements from the Margins, PRAH presents two artists from their roster who both cite Margate, and PRAH’s Margate-based music residency programme, as monumental to their artistic development.
Tony Njoku is a British-Nigerian composer and electronic producer who masterfully crafts experimental classical with ethereal synthesisers, emotive falsetto vocals with spiritual introspection, and bassy percussive glitches that oscillate between his London and Lagos influences.
Donna Thompson is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who centres community as a path to transcendence. She is also a key figure and collaborator at Total Refreshment Centre – an influential mainstay in the East London music scene.
Healing workshops:
Victoria Barrow Williams and Kelly Abbott
People Dem Collective (PDC) is a Black-led community organisation based in Margate, Kent, dedicated to dismantling systemic racism and fostering social equity through the power of arts and culture. Rooted in the lived experiences of Black, Brown, and Diaspora communities, PDC strives to elevate underrepresented voices and create inclusive spaces that celebrate diverse cultural expressions. For Movements from the Margins, PDC co-founders Victoria Barrow Williams and Kelly Abbott (who trained as massage practitioners to sustain their work as community leaders) will partake in a public performance of radical rest and regeneration – normalising displays of collective self-care and therapeutic touch for Black and Brown bodies.
Rieko Whitfield and Tony Njoku
Diasporas Now is a platform for expanded performance by the global majority, programming curated events that bridge workshops, panel discussions, museum lates, and nightlife. Their community celebrates cross-diasporic identities and champions artists of colour. Diasporas Now director, musician and performance artist Rieko Whitfield will lead a multisensory guided meditation and sound healing performance in collaboration with Tony Njoku. As a certified reiki practitioner, Rieko will share her unique take on Japanese energy healing rituals that can help empower anyone’s self-care practice.
Panel Talk:
People Dem Collective (Victoria Barrow Williams)
Diasporas Now (Rieko Whitfield)
Touching Bass (Errol Anderson, Alex Rita)
Representatives from global majority centred organisation People Dem Collective and Black Cultural Archives, performance platform Diasporas Now, and record label Touching Bass share insights into the art and improvisation of sustaining long-term cultural movements, and the importance of cross-pollinating support networks in nurturing deep-rooted infrastructural change.
Film Screenings:
Celeste: She by the Sea
Ebun Sodipo makes work for black trans people of the future. Guided by black feminist study, with a methodology of collage and fabulation, her work locates and produces real and imaginable narratives of black trans women’s presence, embodiment, and interiority across the past, present, and future. “Celeste” is a fragmented narrative film that speculates on the interior worlds of those who we might now call “black” and “trans” as they were being transported on slave ships.
Peter Spanjer
SWIM
Peter Spanjer is a Nigerian filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist, currently living and working in London. Using mixed media that combines experimental filmmaking, sound and text, Peter’s practice investigates ideas around identity, subjectivity, history and sensuality. Through his work, he continuously aims to reframe spaces which have historically included black bodies but have excluded black narratives. Identifying water and public space as recurring motifs specifically within black queer narratives, “SWIM” explores how intimacy escalates when the private and the public intertwine.
Nourishment:
Denai Moore is a Jamaican-born artist, chef, and author of Plentiful: Vegan Jamaican Recipes to Repeat, who started her pop-up restaurant Dee's Table in 2017 as a way of connecting her nostalgia of Jamaican flavours from her childhood home. Inspired by her travels around the world and growing up in London, Denai will nourish Movements from the Margins with her unique take on Jamaican food.
Kromanti Rum is an award-winning libation, honouring the true spirit of Island life with its authentic mix of Caribbean fruits, herbs and spices. Taking its name from the Kromanti people, their rums are infused with the ingredients that provided physical and spiritual nourishment to its community.
Images by Sterling Chandler