ICA

Where do we begin? This Saturday there will be a panel responding to Gray Wielebinski’s exhibition The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low, which addresses overarching themes of apocalypse, social and political precarity, and ruling systems of control.

From 'approved' text on our website:

These themes have taken on a new resonance in light of the ongoing 'humanitarian catastrophe' in Gaza. Many artists – in terms of their work and their personal opinions – are facing criticism following their support for Palestinian people.

The panel will discuss the inextricable link between censorship and capitalism within the cultural sector and name the ethics at hand as we face this 'human rights issue'.

Joining the panel are artists Larissa Sansour, Tai Shani and Hannah Black, with professor Laleh Khalili and writer and political commentator Yara Hawari, and chaired by art historian Larne Abse Gogarty."

False Freedom: Silencing in the Arts on Solidarity with Palestine
Sat Dec 16, 4pm

Background image / Larissa Sansour, A Space Exodus, 2009, film, 5 min. 24 sec. Image: courtesy of the artist.

🕊️ Flock Together invites you to the ICA to celebrate Black, Brown + POC creativity on Wed 13 Dec for an evening of joy, music and inspiration.

Flock Together started as a birdwatching club in 2020 but has since evolved into leading the global outdoors movement, challenging perceptions on what ‘nature’ is and who it belongs to, and helping marginalised groups reap the benefits of the outdoors.

The Flock Together community is endlessly inspired by nature and what it can teach about how connected we really are to each other.

This gathering away from their monthly walks is focused on this idea + marks the start of a new chapter for the group as they dig deeper into the relationship between nature and creativity.

In these difficult times, it is more important than ever to come together and, while always delivered by POC, this event is open to everyone. Free, but bookings are required. ica.art/flock-together-creative-social

Tomorrow at 5pm: Imagine you were never considered to be human. How would you perceive the world? What future is possible? Fugitive Feminism considers the ways in which Black women have been excluded from, struggled to achieve and opted to reject the category of ‘human’, drawing on the legacies of bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Angela Davis and others.

This reading group continues Silver Press and Iniva’s collaborative exploration of the ‘fugitive’ through collective reading and listening marking the publication of Fugitive Feminism by Akwugo Emejulu.

Calling for a collective process of speculative dialogue, Fugitive Feminism is an invitation to consider the flight into the unknown: an uncertain and dangerous path, which remains an essential element of liberation.��This reading group will be facilitated by Hudda Khaireh.�In partnership with Iniva and Silver Press.

Off-Circuit: Pictures of Ghosts + Q&A with Kleber Mendonça Filho is screening tonight! 📽️

A multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the city of Recife.

Combining archive documentary, mystery, film clips and personal memories, Pictures of Ghosts is a moving and playful film that examines both the architectural and social structures of his home city and his relationship to cinema and the spaces it inhabits.

The London Premiere will be followed by a week-long run in the ICA Cinema.

Get your tickets!

TOMORROW: Club Des Femmes presents a thought-provoking evening featuring seven short films on abortion and bodily autonomy, in collaboration with Silver Press’ new anthology After S*x.

Reproductive justice is ongoing, communal work that crosses lines of gender identity, class and race. Working backwards – as reproductive justice access appears to be – from an artist's film about the Repeal the 8th processions in Republic of Ireland in 2018 to illegal abortions in Australia in the 1930s, this programme puts the long history of the feminist struggle for freedom on screen

So Mayer and Ania Ostrowska will introduce After S*x on screen, with films including:

Repeal! Procession, dir. Mia Mullarkey
Autoficción on 35mm, dir. Laida Lertxundi
Light on a Path, Follow, dir. Elliot Montague
The Line, dir. Melisa Resch
Abortion Helpline, This is Lisa, dir. Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater & Mike Attie
The Journey that Matters: What It Was Like, dir. Arwen Curry, featuring Ursula K. Le Guin
One Hundred a Day on 16mm, dir. Gillian Armstrong

Starts 6:30pm.

.press

Don't miss it! Tickets at the link in our bio.

Join us for three events from Fri – Sun exploring reproductive rights, Black feminism, and solidarity with Palestine + liberation struggles around the world as part of a series with Silver Press, in which we examine freedom through the lenses of collective liberation, bodily autonomy, reproductive justice and feminism.

Tickets + details here! Get them before they sell out. ica.art/silver-press

sp0tify wrapped just dropped

Four artist talks and sessions by kicks off this evening with artist collective Keiken.

Tonight at 6.30pm, the artist collective Keiken chat about their current project – the game Morphogenic Angels. They'll screen parts of the game and talk through the work’s development alongside the key concepts and ideas behind it.

1. Keiken – Wed 29 Nov
2. Gary Zhexi Zhang – Sun 28 Jan
3. Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley – Wed 26 Jun
4. Ben Rivers – Wed 24 Jul

ica.art/conditions

Come through South Asian electronic music + chats this Friday night to launch Subcontinental Synthesis, a collection of essays exploring India’s first electronic music studio.

Tickets here ica.art/subcontinental-synthesis

We’re excited to announce our next exhibition Abattoir by artist Aria Dean coming to the ICA in February 2024.

Aria Dean: Abattoir explores the relationship between modernity and death, drawing parallels between a slaughterhouse and contemporary systemic violence and subjugation.

The show features Dean’s 3D animated film installation, Abattoir, U.S.A.!, in our main gallery, which moves through the inside of an empty slaughterhouse, alongside a new object-based work in the adjacent gallery.

Aria Dean: Abattoir positions Blackness as a structural force and structural object, and expands on Dean’s own critiques of representational systems, and how aesthetics, imagery, and visibility, like cultural signifiers and lived experiences, intersect with questions of race and power.

The analogy of the slaughterhouse –– and the question it poses of death under structural forces as a cornerstone to modern life – are more relevant than ever. Abattoir also unpacks the functions of cinema and the origins of modernist architectures and puts them in conversation with histories of industrialisation, anti-Blackness, fascism, and colonialism.

It's the New York-based artist’s first exhibition in the UK. From Thursday 8 Feb – Sunday 5 May 2024.

Images: Aria Dean, Abattoir, U.S.A.!, 2023, single-channel video, sound, colour, 10:50 min. Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.

ica.art/aria-dean-abattoir

The creator of the Netflix show S*x Education, Laurie Nunn, will be joining our evening of discussions this Friday, exploring why abortion, reproductive justice and bodily autonomy remain essential to collective freedoms.

Join us on Fri 24 Nov for After S*x with Edna Bonhomme and Alice Spawls, the editors of the new anthology After S*x. They'll be joined by Laurie, playwright Beth Steel and journalist Sian Norris.

The ICA x Silver Press we shape ourselves series continues across the weekend of 1 – 3 Dec with events including:
- After S*x on screen with Club des Femmes
- Fugitive Feminism reading group
- 'we shape ourselves with the force of each other'

See the full programme ica.art/learning/silver-press

𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗱𝗲𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝗲𝘅? We examine freedom through the lenses of collective liberation, bodily autonomy, reproductive justice and feminism in a series of talks at the ICA with Silver Press. . From 24 Nov – 3 Dec.

𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗲𝘅 / 𝗙𝗿𝗶 𝟮𝟰 𝗡𝗼𝘃 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟳 – 𝟭𝟬𝗽𝗺
The editors of After S*x (Silver Press, 2023), Edna Bonhomme and Alice Spawls are joined by playwright Beth Steel and journalist Sian Norris and special guests as they delve into personal, political and cultural perspectives on abortion and reproductive justice, highlighting the experiences of people of colour and working class people through essay, poetry and politics.

𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 '𝗦𝗶𝗹𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀: 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝘃𝗲𝘀' 🦋

Tickets ica.art/silver-press

𝙸𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚎: ‘𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚗𝚔 𝙶𝚘𝚍 𝙵𝚘𝚛 𝙰𝚋𝚘𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗’, 𝚅𝚒𝚟𝚊 𝚁𝚞𝚒𝚣, 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚁𝙸𝚂𝙳 𝙻𝚒𝚋𝚛𝚊𝚛𝚢 𝚉𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝙲𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗, 𝟸𝟶𝟷𝟽

Notes on Displacement by Khaled Jarrar is a film chronicling the journey of Nadira, an elderly Palestinian woman who has been a refugee since the age of 12 after the Nakba in 1948.

Having lived in Syria in stateless exile, she must leave for safety, embarking on a gruelling journey across Syria, Greece, Bulgaria and Hungary to destination Germany.

As part of the London Palestine Film Festival which starts this weekend on 18 Nov, we’re showing Notes on Displacement. The fear, disorientation and solidarity is palpable in this documentary, and the idea of a safe existence elsewhere is a distant dream.

Filmmaker Khaled Jarrar receives unsettling videos and voice messages as they cross to the Greek island of Le**os. He joins them there, on the long road to a new life. Jarrar has personal reasons for going through this experience in order to eliminate, through his own images, the distance so dominant in Western media coverage.

He worms his way through the thronging crowds, gets lost in the night with his group, discovers how dangerous language barriers can be, and wanders around in the dehumanising camps. And in a sense he – along with the viewer – becomes a true member of this family.

London Palestine Film Festival

When: Sun 26 Nov, 4:30pm

Tickets ica.art/footsteps-on-the-wind-notes-on-displacement

Thu 16 Nov, 6:30pm | The author of Underdogs: Social Deviance and Q***r Theory, Heather Love, will be running a workshop discussing how q***r theory today has been shaped by the Cold War-era world of 'social deviance' research.

Get your tickets ica.art/heather-love-underdogs-social-deviance-and-q***r-theory

Image: AA Bronson, Self-Disclosures, 2012, Digital Pigment print, 42 × 30cm, Edition of 50 + 5 APs, signed and numbered, one of a pair of limited editions. It's available to buy at shop.ica.art. See the link in our bio.

TALK | 15 Nov | Explore the boundaries of private and public realms and untold stories, framed around the themes of Gray Wielebinski’s exhibition The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low.

In this conversation with Huw Lemmey, Ian Penman, and Asa Seresin, forgotten histories are framed around sci-fi, Cold War legacies and paranoia, espionage and the works of film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

The day before, Huw will introduce the film 'Ungentle' (dir. Huw Lemmey and Onyeka Igwe, 2020), which inspects the historical convergence of British espionage and homosexuality, exploring themes of secrecy, privacy, deception, and underground knowledge.

ica.art/sublime-paranoia

Today (Saturday 21 October) from 12pm – 11pm, the ICA will remain a space for water, toilets and shelter from the rain for those in the area attending demonstrations for Palestine.

Off-Circuit launches with the UK Premiere of Wang Bing’s portrait of classical composer Wang Xilin, followed by an in-person Q&A with Wang Bing on 27 October.

The latest work from artist Wang Bing represents an intriguing diversion in his practice as he departs from his usual observational mode and collaborates with cinematographer Caroline Champetier for something decidedly more performance based.

Presented in partnership with Goodman Gallery.

The London Palestine Film Festival returns to the ICA for its 24th edition | 18 – 26 November. More info on the documentaries screening at the ICA + tickets here 🌹 ica.art/london-palestine-film-festival-2023

Selfridges × ICA
14 – 15 October

As part of a collaboration between Selfridges and the ICA, our cinema team have curated a one-off programme for Selfridges Cinema.

Programme includes:

All Light, Everywhere, dir. Theo Anthony, USA 2021, 109 min., English

Dry Ground Burning (Mato seco em chamas), dirs. Adirley Queirós & Joana Pimenta, Brazil / Portugal 2022

Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary, dir. S.R. Bindler, USA 1998, 98 min., English

Privilege (New 4K Restoration), dir. Yvonne Rainer, USA 1990

Book now via

Two late nights of DJs, live sets and UK premieres, spanning club sounds / sub-bass / spatial sound / visceral postmodern opera / gabber / apocalyptic noise in partnership with CTM Festival. 20 + 21 October.

ICA | CTM × ICA CTM Festival for Adventurous Music & Art Berlin partners for a two-day programme, marking the first time the acclaimed festival arrives in the UK, testing the current possibilities and limits of music while supporting a wide range of artists and sound cultures.

These 8 prints are available individually as part of our 75th Anniversary Portfolio published by !

Featuring: Chris Ofili, Antonia Showering, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, Ann Craven, Lisa Bruce, Mandy El-Sayegh, Peter Doig and Billy Childish.

Come find us at Allied Editions booth, P3 where a selection of these works will be on view, in addition to works by Elad Lassry, Graham Little, Peter Saville and Silke Otto-Knapp.

Sales proceeds go towards supporting the future programming at the ICA.

Get yours while you still can!

Let's 1v1? The Gay Pawn is a chess club, workshop and social space for all abilities (beginners especially welcome) hosted by Twayna Mayne.♟️

Wednesday, 18 October ica.art/the-gay-pawn

Come through for a night of conversation, performance, party, and piss-take to celebrate the publication of Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich, and Famous, published by Thames & Hudson, along with the launch of the new ICA scarf 🧣 designed by SPORTS BANGER.

Part of the profits go to supporting the ICA's future programme.

ica.art/sports-banger

ICA | Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich & Famous Join us for a night of conversation, anarchic performance, party, and pisstake to celebrate the launch of the book and the ICA scarf designed by Sports Banger, with a proportion of sales profits supporting the ICA’s future programme.

We've got lots lined up for you this week! More info and tickets at ica.art

London Korean Film Festival 2023 | 7 – 21 November ica.art/london-korean-film-festival-2023

The festival returns for its 18th edition in venues across London, including the ICA.