New Dialogues with Sound
Tate Britain Interpretation Artist in Residence 2023-24

Sonic Interventions | Live Performance | Workshops | Presentations | Public Event

How can sound be used to surface untold or hidden stories surrounding artworks? Does sound allow us to form new relationships with and connections to art?

Responding to these questions throughout a year-long artist residency, Joshua Woolford has created six new sound pieces for the Tate Britain collection. Throughout their residency, they have explored the potential of sound to create dialogues with artworks through talks, sound pieces and live performances.

Over the last 12 months, Joshua Woolford has created and shared live performances at the Queer and Now festival in June 2023 and the Late at Tate Britain: Desire, Culture and History in August 2023. They have hosted a sound workshop with local youth organisation City Lions and held a reading group between Tate and iniva with PRIM, the platform for queer Black storytelling.

Woolford has actively explored the power and potential of ‘building communities around questions’. Throughout the residency, they have collaborated with a number of artists and musicians including Tawiah, Lie Ning, Nkisi, Tia Simon-Campbel (Sippin’ T), Tereza Dellz, Zein Majali, Kenichi Iwasa, Anne Duffau and Nwakke.

In response to Mona Hatoum’s Present Tense, Woolford has connected with Radio Alhara and Learning Palestine to create a sound piece. They have included elements from their 12hr radio programmes, excerpts from Jayce Salloum’s interview with Soha Bechara, alongside field recordings of artisanal soap-making in the West Bank of Occupied Palestine, recorded by Morgan Totah from Handmade Palestine. Through building these networks and dialogues around artworks, Woolford surfaces new narratives around Tate’s collection.

More Info →

Photography by Anna-Lena Krause and Roisin Jones
Curator: Hannah Geddes

peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must

The Enigma of Arrival, Royal College of Art

Video Installation
2 Channel digital video
08:00 & 30:00 minutes

Exploring the rich history and experiences of members of the Caribbean diaspora here in the UK, Woolford has positioned themselves in dialogue with the countryside and rural environment in stark contrast to the English tradition of landscape paintings. Rather than showcasing serene stretches of land, Woolford’s piece consists of sharp movement and raw emotion screened alongside disorienting, harshly shifting environments which are in constant motion.

Filmed in and around one of the few surviving Chartist cottages in the Midlands whose political slogan ‘Peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must’ inspired the title of the piece, Woolford is both reflecting on their personal experience of being alone in a new landscape, as well as exploring the historical potency of an early 19th Century political movement whose protests, petitions and direct action paved the way for the working classes and non land-owning population of the UK to be afforded a voice within the political system.

Woolford’s piece continues a legacy of Black British artists such as Ingrid Pollard and Harold Offeh who position the Black body within the British landscape as a form of resistance, as well as referencing the role of Jamaican Chartist Leader William Cuffay in the advancement of the movement in 1840’s England.

Trailer ︎︎︎

Commissioned by RCA CCA 2024 cohort for The Enigma of Arrival

Dancing with the devil / a symphony of organs scattered over the floor New Contemporaries Live, Camden Art Centre

Live Performance

In the face of state-sponsored destruction worldwide, I’m trying to imagine what kind of liberation could be possible for marginalised and oppressed people in the face of social and political structures which seem to not be satisfied until they have pulled us apart.

Every day my heart breaks and I’m expected to pick it up and carry on. Triggering my metaphoric and emotional evisceration is the physical violence enacted upon literal human bodies. Trapped and besieged. A reality which my experience draws no comparison to. A reality in Palestine, in Congo, Sudan…

Throughout the performance simple interactions with external, natural and technological ‘organs’ are amplified through repetition, audio loops and electronic processing. Relationships established and maintained through proximity are reinforced and broken down. Fractured elements overlap and distract from each other. Tangled up between states of (unfulfilled) desire and despair (the Body Without Organs)

Video & More Info ︎︎︎

Photography by Sam Nightingale
Videography by Ramzia Jawara

MA HA WISU

Assembly, Somerset House

Live Performance collaboration with Nkisi

MA HA WISU, meet me at the crossroads is a multi-dimensional and sensorial experimentation in dance, movement, sound, music, sculpture and storytelling, blurring and blending the boundaries between ritual and musical gestures.

Exploring the immaterial legacies embedded within sound, artist and musician Nkisi collaborates with transdisciplinary artist Joshua Woolford in a new work for Assembly that sees music and dance used to decode and recode ancestral traditions and spiritual technologies.

My solo sound excerpt →

Concept by Nkisi

zing, vecht, huil, bid, lach, werk en bewonder (Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire)
The Mondrian Initiative, Blaricum

Video Commission collaboration with Tia Campbell, Joshua Fay, Sin Wai Kin, Shuang Li, Ruoru Mou, Lydia Ourahmane, Martine Syms & Ryan Trecartin
Digital video
03:41

Sophia Al-Maria, recipient of The Mondrian Prize 2023, invited Tia Campbell, Joshua Fay, Sin Wai Kin, Shuang Li, Ruoru Mou, Lydia Ourahmane, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin and Josh Woolford to join her at the artist colony in Laren to collectively work on a film based on the principles of an exquisite corpse. These individual pieces were handed to Kadeem Oak who forged together the film.

The exquisite corpse – also known as cadavre exquis - is a game that gained immense popularity during the rise of the Surrealist movement in the 1920s. Each participant would take turns in drawing or writing on a sheet of paper, followed by folding the paper so its contribution would stay hidden before passing it on to the next player. In Zing, vecht, huil, bid, lach, werk en bewonder – laced with recordings by musician Kelsey Lu and the presence of many guests, human and non-human, from past and present – Sophia and her fellow artists take the game to the 21st century.

Performers: Peer Liening-Ewert and Lewis Walker
Horse Team: Stella Fauré and Yara

A collaborative video project of Tia Campbell, Joshua Fay, Sin Wai Kin, Shuang Li, Sophia Al-Maria, Ruoru Mou, Lydia Ourahmane, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin and Joshua Woolford, created during Sophia Al-Maria’s residency for the Mondriaan Prize 2023

and you say you never met the devil?
What No Fear Looks Like, Shoreditch Arts Club

Video Installation
3 channel digital video
08:00 minutes each

and you say you never met the devil? is a 15 minute performance video in three parts which reflects on themes of creation, destruction and recreation within the oppressive, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist systems we endure.

Movement, light and sound are utilised for their ephemeral nature as representations of a struggle for survival in a world that constantly, consciously attempts to erase us.

The setting is minimal and abstract. A non-space. A vessel for any narrative to play out. A space that floats in our imagination. Shot in a studio against both white and black backdrops - emphasising the essentiality of the body in defining and navigating space - there are no props in the classic sense. In this world the individual is responsible and dependent for only herself.

During the 15 minute video we travel through scenes which are indicated by a change of hue (blue - red - green). Within each scene there is a flicker between dark and light. A flicker between motion and inaction.

The three scenes tap into and explore separate states / emotions, which are linked to natural environments representative of Josh’s native Dominica yet globally recognisable: Scene 1: Decent (Sea), Scene 2: Tumult (Volcano), Scene 3: Appraise (Jungle). These are explored through dance, movement, poses and posturing and accompanied by spoken word poetry and an experimental soundscape, developed as a representation of and abstraction from the themes and contexts running through the three scenes.

Each scene was filmed by a different videographer (Bernice Mulenga, Siniša, Ramzia Jawara) in order to capture different essence and perceptions.

Curated by Wa-Ju

and you say you never met the devil? 02
Gucci Flagship store, New Bond Street

Video Installation
Digital video
08:00 minutes

and you say you never met the devil? is a 15 minute performance video in three parts which reflects on themes of creation, destruction and recreation within the oppressive, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist systems we endure.

Movement, light and sound are utilised for their ephemeral nature as representations of a struggle for survival in a world that constantly, consciously attempts to erase us.

The setting is minimal and abstract. A non-space. A vessel for any narrative to play out. A space that floats in our imagination. Shot in a studio against both white and black backdrops - emphasising the essentiality of the body in defining and navigating space - there are no props in the classic sense. In this world the individual is responsible and dependent for only herself.

During the 15 minute video we travel through scenes which are indicated by a change of hue (blue - red - green). Within each scene there is a flicker between dark and light. A flicker between motion and inaction.

The three scenes tap into and explore separate states / emotions, which are linked to natural environments representative of Josh’s native Dominica yet globally recognisable: Scene 1: Decent (Sea), Scene 2: Tumult (Volcano), Scene 3: Appraise (Jungle). These are explored through dance, movement, poses and posturing and accompanied by spoken word poetry and an experimental soundscape, developed as a representation of and abstraction from the themes and contexts running through the three scenes.

Each scene was filmed by a different videographer (Bernice Mulenga, Siniša, Ramzia Jawara) in order to capture different essence and perceptions.

Curated by Truls Blaasmo

A Gift of Illicit Pleasures / Two angels in search of intimacy

Closeted Desires, The Place x Fringe!

Live Performance Collaboration with Dahc Dermur / Chadd Curry

“And the encounter took place, at last, between two dreamers, neither of whom could wake the other, except for the bitterest and briefest of seconds. Then sleep descended again, the search continued, chaos came again.”
- Another Country, James Baldwin

What’s happening in the dark?
Between pillars of flesh and stone.
Seeking the light, a moment of recognition.
Nurtured. Seduced. Shattered.

Worlds collide and in their impact spark a glimmer of hope - for a terrain of amplified impulse, existing in endless multiples.

Unfurling silently, cascading and culminating in moments of bliss and distraction before dissolving to nothing and starting again.

Flesh and bone in a dance of intimate desire.

Curated by Kane Stonestreet
Photography by Dizzie Article

Looking at Shostakovich Quartet No. 15 opus 144 by Aubrey Williams

Late at Tate Britain: Desire, Culture and History

Live Performance

Continuing to explore how sound and performance opens up new connections to artworks, Woolford has developed an immersive soundscape in response to Isaac Julien’s exhibition What Freedom Is To Me as well as the abstract paintings of Aubrey Williams.

Through layering, repetition and distortion, Woolford built and transformed sounds over time, forming a rhythmic collage of found video footage, audio samples, experimental electronic sound and spoken word. Inviting the audience to confront and engage with a fragmented world, Woolford injects open questions, personal experiences, references to popular music and thoughts around ongoing global crises.

Dmitry Shostakovich’s Quartet which inspired Aubrey Williams’ painting of the same name opens the performance and is gradually transformed by Woolford into a spectral, haunting soundscape, barely recogniseable to the original.’

Featuring Shostakovich Quartet No. 15 opus 144 by Dmitri Shostakovich and an excerpt from Nina Simone: Freedom

Excerpt ︎︎︎

Photography by Anna-Lena Krause & Eugenio Falcioni
Videography by Tanka Tanka

this body which is you. i. all of us. completely.

Drifts Festival 2023, Museum of Technology Helsink

Live Performance

For Drifts Festival I developed a new performance piece responding to the island on which the performance took place. Specifically the fact that fish commute up and down the two streams which seperate the island from the mainland, one side of which (the side the fish prefer) has a water mill installed which kills a large proportion of the fish trying to navigate those waters.

Reflecting back on experiences of adolescence, themes of migration, life and death, water, land and environmental disaster... This piece became the first where spoken word accompanied sound design throughout - an extended monologue drawing connections between seemingly disperate yet undeniably intersecting topics, timelines and geographies.

Excerpt ︎︎︎

Unreal Engine Developer Filip Setmanuk
Photography by Aala Nyman

A whole population housed inside a single body

Peckham 24

Live Performance collaboration with Anna-Lena Krause

As the influence of emerging technologies continues to define and redefine our realities, ‘A Whole Population Housed Inside a Single Body’ explores and expands upon the roles of digital, technological and organic interfaces as mediators toward a shared existence.

Human experiences are lived and held in the body. Skin, clothing and other physical cues from our external surfaces shape the visible and tangible human interface.

An interface which is in constant flux, navigating both physical and digital realms through sight, sound and touch. Within these realms, everything moves in relation to each other. Nothing is isolated, nor can it be understood without all other things.

To be a body isn't to be in space, it is to be of it. As the boundaries between collective bodies merge and individuality is reimagined, we find elements of others within us and recognise ourselves in others. Nobody is untouched by the world(s) they inhabit.

Curated by Tom Lovelace
Photography by Mika Kailes and Anna-Lena Krause
Styling by Mainline

Specialists + Drybabe w/ Josh Woolford
Foundation FM

Sound mix
00:59:30 - 01:31:30

A sonic dive into the breadth of the diasporic experience. British Black Panther member Linton Kwesi Johnson sets the tone with his poem Inglan is a Bitch. Naeem picks up the baton, and is joined by Erykah Badu, Nina Simone and Drexciya, all pioneers with work which challenges our socio-political conditions.

Eerie electronic tracks and high-tempo outbursts reposition these narratives and call on the radical acts of love, rest and enjoyment amongst critical engagement.

I also want to take this time to send my support to the protests happening right now in response to the UK’s attack on trans rights, following the decision to block gender recognition reform legislation, passed by the government in Scotland.

Invited by Drybabe (K Bailey Obazee)

Untitled
Always Coming Home, Iklectik

Live Performance

Curated by A---Z (Anne Duffau)
Photography by Matt Favero

The 5 Portals

Queer & Now Festival, Tate Britain

Sonic Intervention | Live Performance

‘For the first public performance as part of their Interpretation residency at Tate, Woolford created a specially commissioned sonic intervention throughout the whole day, disrupting the gallery space and offering alternative ways of navigating the institution and collections on display. From 10am till 10pm their piece, The Five Portals, played throughout the gallery. Woolford then activated their soundscape with a live performance, further exploring the power sound has over our movements and actions.’

The 5 Portals present themselves as ways in which to explore / enter into the space, and provocations for how to interact with the architecture, people and artworks on display. Each portal is distinct in character, yet are made up of varying quantities of the same elements - that is to say that water exists within fire; the physical body exists within the mind, etc. The portals can be seen as connecting two points in space (geographic) and / or two points in time (past, present, future)

Excerpt ︎︎︎

Photography by Mika Kailes

you won’t get the best of me

The Voices of a Tempest Act III - You Make Me Feel, Somerset House

Live Performance

Video & More Info ︎︎︎

Curated by A---Z (Anne Duffau)
Videography and edit by Ramzia Jawara

Cascade Live

HOME x V&A Late: Feeling Through Others, V&A

Live Performance

Transdisciplinary artist Joshua Woolford builds upon their ‘Cascade’ body of work with a durational performance that explores the personal, familial, and cultural histories held within clay.

Their performance, which was initiated at the V&A in London earlier this year, draws inspiration from the overlapping material cultures of the Arawak, Taíno, Kalinago, West African, and European peoples across the Caribbean.

By drawing on these artifacts and repositioning them in direct relation to each other, Woolford confronts the violent histories of settler colonialism and the trafficking of enslaved people which is evidenced through the geographical proximity of these previously disparate forms.

The use of unprocessed wild clay that the artist dug up themselves in North London reflects their desire to both meet and present themselves through this body of work. Having mixed Afro-Caribbean and British heritage, the act of sculpting Caribbean and West-African forms using British soil speaks to the complexities involved while grappling the intersections of colonial history and identity within the wider context of environmental processes and elements.

The live and durational nature of Woolford’s performance challenges the expectations of sculpture as a solid and enduring form, drawing attention to the malleability of clay and the potential the material holds for redefining our relationship to existing structures.

Video & More Info ︎︎︎

Curated by HOME by Ronan Mckenzie
Documentation by Roisin Jones

Black Mass

The Takeover, Newington Green Meeting House

Sculpture

Photo’s & More info ︎︎︎

Curated by Sade English of Anticlone Gallery

Bound 01

Transforming Legacies, Black Cultural Archives

Painting | Live Performance

Curated by Pacheanne Anderson

Untitled

Transforming Legacies, Black Cultural Archives

Live Performance | Painting

Curated by Pacheanne Anderson

William Blake House
The Diaspora, William Blake House

Painting

More info ︎︎︎

Curated by Sade English of Anticlone Gallery

Tumult 01

Children of the Diaspora during 1-54 Art Fair, Somerset House

Painting

Booth curated by Pacheanne Anderson

Untitled
Art In*, Soho House

Live Performance

Curated by Pacheanne Anderson, Produced by Brian Maina

Cascade II
Royal College of Art

Sculpture

and you say you never met the devil? Triptych

Royal College of Art

Painting

Agents of Colonialism

Royal College of Art

Sculpture

and you say you never met the devil?

Royal College of Art

Video

and you say you never met the devil? is a 15 minute performance video in three parts which reflects on themes of creation, destruction and recreation within the oppressive, patriarchal, colonial, capitalist systems we endure.

Movement, light and sound are utilised for their ephemeral nature as representations of a struggle for survival in a world that constantly, consciously attempts to erase us.

The setting is minimal and abstract. A non-space. A vessel for any narrative to play out. A space that floats in our imagination. Shot in a studio against both white and black backdrops - emphasising the essentiality of the body in defining and navigating space - there are no props in the classic sense. In this world the individual is responsible and dependent for only herself.

During the 15 minute video we travel through scenes which are indicated by a change of hue (blue - red - green). Within each scene there is a flicker between dark and light. A flicker between motion and inaction.

The three scenes tap into and explore separate states / emotions, which are linked to natural environments representative of Josh’s native Dominica yet globally recognisable: Scene 1: Decent (Sea), Scene 2: Tumult (Volcano), Scene 3: Appraise (Jungle). These are explored through dance, movement, poses and posturing and accompanied by spoken word poetry and an experimental soundscape, developed as a representation of and abstraction from the themes and contexts running through the three scenes.

Each scene was filmed by a different videographer (Bernice Mulenga, Siniša, Ramzia Jawara) in order to capture different essence and perceptions.

More info & Video ︎︎︎

What do you see when I feel what I feel?
HOME by Ronan Mckenzie

Installation | Video | Sculpture | Live Performance

At once commenting and questioning - wdys comprises a series of text, performance, visuals and smells which are all manifestations of the forced hyper-awareness I have of my queer Black body, and the myriad ways it is read and received

More Info & Video ︎︎︎

What do you see when I feel what I feel?

Play and the Post Peak, The Factory Project

Installation | Video | Live Performance

Curated by Jerome Ince-Mitchell

Cascade I
Royal College of Art

Sculpture

PRE -
UY Studio, Berlin

Exhibition & Event Curation

PRE - Previous to; before

PRE - was a moment in time, at the cusp of an action which closes one chapter and begins the next.

PRE - was an exhibition of budding and established artists.

PRE - was a ‘civilized’ brunch.

PRE - was a party of live performances.

PRE - was a trip down memory lane and a projection into the future.

PRE - was soundtracked by a tight selection of Berlin Djs.

PRE - is hard to define.

More info & Video ︎︎︎

PERFORMANCE

PAINTING

SCULPTURE

ART DIRECTION / BRANDING

VISUAL DESIGN

EDITORIAL

CLOTHING