Somerset House Studios has revealed details of its early 2025 programme: The biannual series Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy commissioned and produced by Somerset House Studios returns in January, with a programme of live events from 28th January – 1st February 2025. Focusing on health and well-being in the face of technological and ecological change, this year’s series will investigate how virtual spaces have reshaped our experiences of sex and desire. The programme invites audiences to engage with lived experiences and radical ideas, to shape a healthier fairer future, against the shifting landscapes of love, relationships, and intimacy online and beyond.
Danish artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s work provides the conceptual framework for the broader series, which explores themes of automated sex and desire. Grumpy, a new commission for Somerset House’s online platform Channel, by the artist, is a declaration of unrequited love. The artwork combines melodic voice recordings, CGI animation, and ceroplastic—an eighteenth-century technique for casting anatomical wax models from dissected bodies. In the film, a chilling echo of the porn industry’s production of silicone bodies for automated use is conflated with the figure of the Anatomical Venus, who is cut open to eroticize the function of the reproductive and sexual organs.
Grumpy will be premiered at the opening event on 28th January and then presented on Channel, Somerset House’s online space for art, ideas and the artistic process – further cementing its commitment to connecting creativity and the arts with wider society, both online and in its central London building.
Exploring the shifting landscapes where intimacy unfolds and evolves, the Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy programme will examine how broader structures, systems, and institutions shape and influence the boundaries of intimacy around platonic and romantic relationships, eroticism, and automation via talks, screenings and performances.
The first event, Bodies and the Industrial Complex on 28th January, marks the launch of the series and the new Channel commission, Grumpy. Following the screening, an ‘in-conversation’ talk will take place between writer Alex Quicho and actor and head of Four Chambers, Vex Ashley, with the pair interrogating the systems that shape how sex is seen, experienced, and exchanged. The talk will be chaired by Professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University, Feona Attwood, and will conclude with the screening of A Cyborg Manifesto by Four Chambers, a visual essay and personal exploration of a life spent online.
On 30th January, the second event Future Fantasies: Intimacy and Fiction will explore how technology is transforming the erotic, and how fiction can empower individuals while challenging enduring stigmas. The evening will start with a performative reading of Guinea Pig by artist Sophie Cundale, who will then be joined in conversation with SWARM Collective, a sex-worker-led initiative and Helen Hester, author of Xenofeminism and Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex. The evening will conclude with the screening of Virus Becoming by Shu Lea Cheung.
The final event of the series, A New Love: Machines and Love on 1st February will be a day-long event of discussions and performances that interrogates Artificial Intelligence and how it has reshaped the very essence of relationships. The event will focus on how AI is being integrated into intimate digital services, offering everything from companionship to counselling, and whether machines can truly replicate, or even enhance, love in the digital age. Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley will present the film TRANS-PORT ME and afterwards will be in conversation with artist Kate Cooper, chaired by philosopher Johnny Golding. The talk will end with the screening of Infection Divers by Kate Cooper. Performances will be presented by Candela Capitan, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Black Venus in Furs, Jao and a DJ set by Marissa Malik (Manuka Honey).
CHANNEL COMMISSION: GRUMPY
Channel continues its online programme with its latest commission by Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Grumpy, a digital artwork which deals with the relationships between automation and arousal, desire and denial. A declaration of unrequited love via melodic voice recordings, CGI animation and ceroplastic – the eighteenth-century practice of producing anatomical waxes from dissected bodies. The Anatomical Venus, is the slashed wax star of the film, with her sexual organs on show visualising their functionality the artist draws parallels with the porn industry’s production of silicone bodies for automated sexual use.
Hansen’s work varies in medium and form spanning wood, clay and metals to CGI animation, VR and video, she participated in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and was a recipient of the 2020 Turner Prize Bursary. Previous Channel commissions include works by Sin Wai Kin, Rashaad Newsome and Keiken.
HYPER FUNCTIONAL, ULTRA HEALTHY
Lancaster Rooms Tuesday 28th January 2025
Bodies and the Industrial Complex 18:45 – 20:30 £8 Full Price ticket / £6 Concession ticket
19:00: Screening of Grumpy by Sidsel Meineche Hansen
19:20: In conversation with writer Alex Quicho and actor Vex Ashley, chaired by Feona Attwood
20:20: Screening of A Cyborg Manifesto (2020) by Four Chambers
A Cyborg Manifesto by Four Chambers contains nudity, depictions of pornography, sexually explicit imagery, and flashing lights. The film is strictly for over 18s only.
Thursday 30th January 2025
Future Fantasies: Intimacy and Fiction 18:45 – 20:30 £8 Full Price ticket / £6 Concession ticket
19:00: Performative reading of Guinea Pig (2023) by Sophie Cundale
19:20: In conversation with SWARM Collective and artist Sophie Cundale chaired by author Helen Hester.
20:20: Screening of Virus Becoming (2022) by Shu Lea Cheang
Saturday 1st February 2025
A New Love: Machines and Love 16:00 – 21:00 Talk only: £8 Full Price ticket / £6 Concession ticket
Performances only: £10 Full Price ticket / £7.50 Concession ticket Full-day ticket: £15 Full Price ticket / £11.25 Concession ticket
16:15: Screening of TRANS-PORT ME (2022) by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
16:30: In conversation with the artists Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and Kate Cooper, chaired by philosopher Johnny Golding.
17:30: Screening of Infection Divers (2018) by Kate Cooper
19:00: Performances by Candela Capitan, Malik Nashad Sharpe, Black Venus, Jao and Marissa Malik (Manuka Honey)
Further notable events at Somerset House Studios:
New film programme titled Home Movies, taking place on 6th Feb, 13th Feb, 20 Feb: three evenings of film screenings exploring archives led by Studios artists Kadeem Oak, Onyeka Igwe and Deborah-Joyce Holman. On until 23rd Feb 2025, Aut-OOO-Arcadia is a solo exhibition by artist Louis Morlæ, and the culmination of Somerset House Studios and UAL Creative Computing Institute’s 12-month Creative Technologies Fellowship
The Studios welcome felix taylor, Jennifer Lauren Martin and felicita as artists in residence.
