Ugly Duck Bermondsey is hosting the inaugural summer edition of @Disturbance on Saturday, June 22, and Sunday, June 23. Building on the success of past events showcasing LGBTQIA+ performances, videos, and digital artists, this edition of @Disturbance will utilise Ugly Duck’s Tanner Street venue to the fullest. The event promises a unique combination of an outdoor party and interactive indoor experiences, creating a sense of wonder and surprise for all attendees.
June’s upcoming live shows will feature a live online stream, allowing fans unable to attend in person to enjoy @Disturbance’s performance to the fullest. @Disturbance is dedicated to promoting inclusivity and creating a welcoming environment for radical, diverse, and queer artists.
This year, @Disturbance will showcase the talents of five artists: Alex Billingham, Samiir Saunders, Ace Rahman, Kobi Essah Ayensuo, and Ella Frost. Their performances will be featured live and on large video screens.
“This year, we look forward to seeing our regular, fabulous @Disturbance crowd and new audiences discovering our work. We’re partnering with disabled-led organisations Care-fuffle and Shape Arts to embark on a journey around accessibility. All artists will create new work where captioning, audio description and BSL translation will be embedded and considered as the work is being created. By employing live streams, projections, and other technologies, we aim to explore and learn what accessibility can mean and what it looks like for artists and audiences. Through this edition of @Disturbance, we question how to make this an integral part of the show, rather than approaching it as an afterthought, so that we can come together and show up for each other as a larger community.”
Director of Ugly Duck and founder of @Disturbance, Deen Atger
The event is artist-led and curated by Deen Atger, with additional contributions from Lucy Nurnberg, who will design the exterior installation; Mahalia Henry-Richards, responsible for graphic design; Knives, a set designer with a background in film; and poet Oduenyi Nwike, who played a crucial role in contributing their multifaceted skills to @Disturbance.
@Disturbance 2024 promises to be an unforgettable journey into creativity, identity, and collective expression.
More about @Disturbance artists:
Samiir Saunders brings a unique blend of spoken word, alternative hip hop, and performance art. Their multimedia poetry aims to empower individuals and communities to embrace curiosity, compassion, and vulnerability in daily life. The themes explored include grind culture, isolation, shame, miscommunication, intimacy, and the impact of the internet. Samiir’s work has been showcased nationally and internationally at various venues.
Kobi Essah Ayensuo is a multi-talented artist based in London. Their work encompasses themes of queer and trans Black identity, coming of age, Ghanaian heritage, as well as reimagining and decolonising the perspectives through which Black history is perceived. Their creative output often combines vocals, harmonic soundscapes, music, and poetry. Kobi has had their work featured by various establishments and they have performed at esteemed venues and events.
Alex Billingham’s art is deeply influenced by her experiences as a disabled, trans, neurodiverse, and queer person. Her work provides a powerful representation of the way these diverse identities interact with and impact wider society. Alex will be presenting a live performance in an immersive setting, incorporating film, installation, and 3D elements. She has exhibited her work at various prominent venues across the UK and internationally.
A visual artist who incorporates video into her work, Ella Frost‘s art revolves around analogue technologies, queer narratives, and Black feminism. For @Distrubance, Ella’s work will be displayed using large video screens. She has collaborated with prominent London nightlife organizations in the past and showcased her film ‘We Can’t Do This Alone’ at the Serpentine Gallery in 2022. She was recently involved in a group show titled Membranes with Hypha Studio and directed the trailer for ‘Out’, a well-received performance piece by artist Ray Young.
Ace Rahman is an innovative British-Bangladeshi artist who expresses their creative ideas through a wide range of mediums, including digital and traditional art forms. For @Disturbance, Ace plans to create an immersive installation using organic materials, mask-making, fruit, and sound, set in an alternate universe of their own making. Their background in graphic communication design, combined with recent studies in computing at the Creative Computing Institute, has honed Rahman’s diverse skillset, allowing them to creatively explore traditional graphic arts as well as interactive digital installations.
@Disturbance runs on 22 & 23 June, 2024, 5 pm – 9.30 pm / £8 – £15 at Ugly Duck, Bermondsey & Online.
