Get to know some of this year’s East London Art Prize shortlisted artists as they take over Whitechapel Gallery in an after-hours programme featuring a host of music, performances, workshops and screenings. Featuring live performances by Gusty Ferro, Joseph Ijoyemi and Lydia Newman, a collective weaving workshop by Darcey Fleming, a participatory installation by Liang-Jung Chen, a talk by dmstfctn and films by Laisul Hoque, Eugene Macki and Yang Zou, plus DJing by NTS host/resident babyschön.
PROGRAMME
Assembly Room: performances
All activity in Assembly Room is drop-in, no booking required
6.15-6.45pm: Gusty Ferro and Anelena Toku
A sound performance in response to Gusty’s installation, exploring noise, disruption, and the body’s relationship to the sculptures.
In collaboration with Anelena Toku, the duo creates an intense soundscape by physically interacting with the sculptural pieces in states of displacement. Using contact microphones and modular synthesisers, they capture and amplify vibrations generated through movement. The performance highlights the sonic potential of touch, pressure, and motion—where sound is produced and shaped through direct engagement with the materials.
7.15-7.50pm: Lydia Newman, 'Sand Suit 3.0' (2025)
In 'Sand Suit 3.0' (2025), Lydia Newman creates an embodied storytelling experience weaving personal and ancestral memories and invites the audience to co-facilitate her process of excavating and releasing what contorts her soul’s expression as she embraces rewilding.
The performance also features Lydia’s painting 'In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here' (2024), examining inherited ideas about race, globalisation, class and gender, rooted in the foundations of colonialism as experienced by a descendant of the Black Diaspora.
8.15-9pm: Joseph Ijoyemi, 'Candles in the Dark' (2025)
'Candles in the Dark' (2025) explores social issues related to migration and integration, focusing on the experiences of Black communities. It examines how cultural identity is maintained and reshaped through movement across different places.
Using archives as musical samples, the performance blends pre-recorded tracks with live sound production, incorporating conversations, social media clips, music and everyday sounds. A screen displays text and moving images, creating a visual element that reflects the themes of migration, belonging and cultural influence.
From 6-9pm between the performances at Assembly Room, NTS host/resident babyschön will be DJing.
Clore Creative Studio: drop-in workshop
6:30-8:30pm Large-scale collaborative weaving with Darcey Fleming
The workshop introduces Darcey Fleming’s weaving techniques that make up her immersive installation, ' A Room' (2024), a colourful world she created to connect and communicate with people. Darcey invites visitors to turn their hand to weaving from the discarded baling twines that she finds in the countryside and that are donated to her by local farmers. Baling twine is used to tie hay bales together, after use it is discarded, burnt or added to landfill. Join us in creating a large-scale collaborative weaving – all materials provided!
Study Studio: drop-in interactive installation
6-8.30pm Liang-Jung Chen, UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee (2025)
An interactive installation of Liang-Jung Chen’s two-month performance project 'UK Indefinite Leave to Remain Application Fee' (2025), investigating labour precarity, survival strategies and the economic realities faced by many migrants in the country. Through a visual archive of timetables, invoices, video clips and more, Chen presents her first-hand experience of working in on zero-hour and gig-economy jobs across London to earn the funds required to apply for settlement. Join us to participate in Chen’s installation where she turns the costs of UK permanent residency into a form of embodied, artistic labour documentation.
Mezzanine Studio: talk & screening
6.30pm and 7.30pm: ‘AI, a Theatre of Memory’ with dmstfctn
A talk unpacking 'Waluigi’s Purgatory' (2024), the second instalment in dmstfctn’s ongoing GOD MODE trilogy of works about AI anomalies, followed by an interactive screening of the work. Set in a 3D theatre simulated in real-time using a game engine, Waluigi’s Purgatory tells the story of an AI that finds itself in a purgatory for cheating AIs.
Dmstfctn will unpack the lore, references and characters behind the work - inspired by real-world examples of anomalies and cheating in AI, as well as by the ‘Waluigi Effect’ theory, proposing that generative AI may sometimes act rogue due to the large amount of protagonist-antagonist tropes found in internet texts used to train them.
Zilkha Auditorium: Films
6-8.30pm Screenings
Laisul Hoque, The Purpose was to Document the Other Side (2023), 15 minutes
Informed by the exploration of intimate conversation, the film compares the artist's upbringing with that of his mother, addressing generational trauma and confronting the emotional distance from his father. Through this documentary, Laisul Hoque engages in the powerful act of curating their narrative together — vulnerable and emotional. It presents a compelling example of reclaiming personal and familial stories.
Eugene Macki, Anachronism (2024), 2 minutes
A video documenting a performance that explores ideas about mobility, struggle, freedom through limitation, resistance, time, place, distance and measurement. Eugene Macki questions the nature of performing an action, as he is interested in how the body occupies and engages with spaces.
Eugene Macki, Opening Dialogue (2019-20), 7 minutes
An installation performance created in Long Beach, Washington, United States. Eugene Macki uses objects and actions to construct an arena that investigates four types of transformations: translation, rotation, reflection, and dilation, while also investigating the relationship between being and becoming. Being is the immutable, the present, while becoming is the transformation, the constant change.
Yang Zou, I love you, life. I hope it's great again (2024), 23 minutes
A short film documenting the artist’s train journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway across Russia over 9 days during the Russia-Ukraine War in 2023. To Yang Zou, it is not just a mere record of his trip but a narrative with various dimensions, from his observations of everyday life on the route – people, food, music and life itself, to memories and imagination – love, secrets, death and power.
Free - Booking required
Location:
77-82 Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Copyright text and images the gallery and the artist