S10 Ep2: Lawrence Lek ~> ASSEMBLY: Christian Marclay

Somerset House Studios

Pedestrians, traffic, roadworks, protest; the corner of Somerset House where Waterloo Bridge meets Embankment is a hive of often unpredictable activity and noise. Acknowledging and working with this to define a compositional framework, Marclay invited a series of guests to collaborate in bringing the outdoors inside for an evolving series of electro-acoustic performances.
Studios resident Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician whose virtual worlds and animated films create alternate versions of real places. For ASSEMBLY he invited collaborators Seth Scott and Robin Simpson to present a site-specific simulation that acts as an uncanny virtual and sonic double of the performance space. Their performance, Doom, reflects the atmosphere during the Extinction Rebellion protests when Waterloo Bridge – which the Lancaster Rooms overlook – was closed to traffic and filled with warning signs of the coming apocalypse.

Christian Marclay’s ambitious and accomplished practice explores the juxtaposition between sound, photography, video and sculpture. His installations display provocative musical and visual landscapes and have been included in exhibitions around the world including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou Paris and Kunsthaus Zurich. More recently, he exhibited The Clock at the Tate Modern (debuted at White Cube in 2010) – an artwork created from thousands of edited fragments, from a vast range of films to create a 24-hour, single-channel video.

Podcast produced by Reduced Listening for Somerset House Studios ASSEMBLY Production by Music Hackspace and sound system by Call & Response, with sound and interaction programming from Black Shuck and Preverbal Studio. Lighting design by KitMapper.

ASSEMBLY is supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund, The Adonyeva Foundation and the John. S Cohen Foundation.