A live programme foregrounding love as a structural, insurgent and worldmaking force through performances, music, film, and installations, presented in collaboration with FuturShock at FOLD.
Love often begins with a kind of collapse, when our boundaries, fears and dreams shift from the personal to the collective. In spaces that allow this surrender, where the self loosens into relation with others, love emerges as an ethic of commitment, reciprocity, and collective responsibility.
Within feminist, queer and decolonial thought, love as a practice demands profound reorientations of relation and the distribution of visibility. To love and to collapse becomes a methodology for rethinking institutions, reconfiguring subjectivities, and imagining new social forms. States of Love and Collapse brings together artists, filmmakers, musicians and DJs to explore practices that embrace incompleteness, desire, failure, and experimentation as positions that orient us in relation to a world in flux.
When collapse becomes the condition, love becomes the method, and the dancefloor or stage becomes the testing ground. In the ruins of the present, through dissolution and collective rupture, what falls apart can be rebuilt, with love.
With Daniel Brandt, Revital Cohen & Tuur Van Balen, JJ Pálka Johnson, Yen-Ching Lin + Fredrik Tjærandsen, Carlos Motta, Shahryar Nashat, Louiza Ntourou-Orlof, Alexandros Pissourios, Yorgos Prinos, James Richards, Space Afrika + Pike, TAAHLIA and Jeph Vanger.
19:00 JEPH VANGER
Athens-born sound artist, composer and DJ Jeph Vanger crafts rhythm-driven sets that move between hybrid club textures and deep, body-shaking low-end. His work bridges performance, spatial sound and sound system culture, centring embodiment, tension and release, and his music has been aired on NTS Radio and BBC Radio 1.
For States of Love and Collapse, Jeph shapes the sonic arc of the night with a DJ set that threads the programme together, opening, closing and weaving between performances to build a shared physical and emotional continuum on the dancefloor, while introducing personal unreleased compositions into the flow.
19:30
JJ PÁLKA JOHNSON, More Than Two: Thinking It Was You, 2018, film, 7’51”
More Than Two: Thinking It Was You is a performance and sound work structured as a song, staging a conversation between partners after one stays out all night with a new lover. More Than Two was a 10 part concept album drawing on interviews, anecdotes and recorded discussions from a London-based queer and poly community about intimacy, coming out and dating apps made over two years with artists/ performers: Lalah-Simone Springer, Patrick O’Reilly, Molly Ward, Yasmine Holness-Dove, Loz Chandler, Naoko Nomoto, Curtis Elvidge and Shamira Turner.
DANIEL BRANDT, The Memory Machine, 2026, film, 12”
After the death of his uncle Alexander, a filmmaker uncovers undeveloped photographs and tape recordings made while Alexander worked as a vicar in 1970s Germany. Drawing on these fragments and Alexander’s recorded voice, the film reconstructs him as a fictional character: a man unable to live in the present, who fabricates memories and falls in love with a woman born entirely from images.
LOUIZA NTOUROU (ORLOF), The Hanged Man, 2026, film, 6’
A man falls into the ground. A man dives into the water. A man is swallowed by the forest. The forest is absorbed by the sea waves. The man and the waves run now through the deep sea. Composed entirely of found footage of dives, the film re-enacts the sensation of falling. What begins as collapse slowly becomes passage. The fall is not an end, but a threshold, a symbolic descent that opens onto transformation, where immersion gives way to a quiet, elemental rebirth.
CARLOS MOTTA, Nefandus, 2013, HD 16:9 format, video, color, sound, 13’4”
In Nefandus two men travel by canoe down the Don Diego river in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the Colombian Caribbean, a landscape of “wild” beauty. The men, an indigenous man and a Spanish speaking man, tell stories about “pecados nefandos” [unspeakable sins, abominable crimes]; acts of sodomy that took place in the Americas during the conquest. It has been documented that Spanish conquistadores used sex as a weapon of domination, but what is known about homoerotic pre-hispanic traditions? How did Christian morality, as taught by the Catholic missions and propagated through war during the Conquest, transform the natives’ relationship to sex? Nefandus attentively looks at the landscape, its movement and its sounds for clues of stories that remain untold and have been largely ignored and stigmatized in historical accounts.
ALEXANDROS PISSOURIOS, He loves a bodiless dream, 2021, Super8 transferred to digital, silent, 2’21”
After the beach empties, the light retires and the place remains. The day’s exposure is soft; the man stands under the shower and wets himself again. Salt leaves the skin and returns to the sea. The dream no longer reflects like an unclouded fountain but passes into relation. Night only begins after this washing. Under the birth of the evening, the body is addressed and held briefly in the interval between light and dark.
JAMES RICHARDS, Radio at Night, 2015, film, 8’
James Richards’ Radio at Night (2015) grapples with the anxiety and pleasure of seeing and sensing in an era saturated by technology. This short experimental video collages together appropriated footage from highly disparate sources: intimate fragments from cinema and medical film, an extract of an erotic movie that documents an imagined Venetian costume party, news broadcasts, negative footage of seagulls flying over the ocean, and imagery of pigs and fish being processed at a food facility, to name a few. Radio at Night is especially preoccupied with the act of seeing and the ways technology makes this sensation mechanical. Accompanied by a soundtrack composed by the artist that includes vocal arrangements recorded with British harmony trio ‘vocal Juice’ refracted through his sampled electronics, Richards confronts his audience with close ups on faces as his subjects’ eyes dart back and forth across the screen.
REVITAL COHEN & TUUR VAN BALEN, Daughter of Dog, 2024, 4k video with sound, 18’
Daughter of Dog (2024) is an 18-minute elegy haunted by forms of attachment and aggression. The film revolves around a text that threads personal notes with references of early rituals, scripture, memory, biology, complicated love and civil engineering.
20:40 JEPH VANGER
20:55 TAAHLIAH, First pulse burning
Scottish multidisciplinary artist TAAHLIAH moves between sound, image and performance, crafting emotionally charged worlds that blur the personal and collective. Known for her acclaimed album Gramarye, her work traces intimacy, identity and transformation through experimental club textures and immersive atmospheres.
For States of Love and Collapse, expect an intimate performance that folds vulnerability, power and cinematic intensity. Turning the dancefloor into a space for release, connection.
21:15 JEPH VANGER
21:25 YEN-CHING LIN + FREDRIK TJÆRANDSEN, F_____A_____C_____E_____
For States of Love and Collapse, Yen-Ching Lin and Fredrik Tjærandsen present a live performance where intimacy, site and resistance collide. Expect a charged physical language that shifts between fragility and force, dissolving the boundary between witness and participant.
Wearable Sculpture by Fredrik Tjærandsen
Sound Editor: Ben Ponton
21:55 JEPH VANGER
22:05 SHAHRYAR NASHAT, Boyfriend_00.JPEG (2022), HD video, 8’, Lover_00.JPEG (2023), HD video, 5’55”, Hustler_00.JPEG (2025), HD video, 4’5”
For States of Love and Collapse Shahryar Nashat presents his Boyfriend_00.JPEG (2022), Lover_00.JPEG (2023), Hustler_00.JPEG (2025) trilogy. Each film examines a facet of contemporary corporeality within a world shaped by digital mediation, the economy of desire and mechanisms of control. Boyfriend_00.JPEG introduces the figure of the beloved as a digital absence—a compressed, fantasized trace of a sculptural partner. Lover_00.JPEG delves into the materiality of the body and its fluids, its sensuality and vulnerability, oscillating between desire and decay. Finally, Hustler_00.JPEG concludes the cycle with an inquiry into intimacy as a transactional and performative space, where the body becomes a resource, an instrument and a commodified surface.
22:25 JEPH VANGER
22:35 SPACE AFRIKA + Pike, States of Love
Working across sound, performance and moving image, Space Afrika create immersive environments where electronic music converges with contemporary art and social inquiry, tracing intimacy, place and collective memory through ambient and experimental forms.
For States of Love and Collapse, they are joined by UK underground drummer and producer Pike, whose sonic language moves between UK bass, alt-rock, dub and avant-garde electronics. Known for emotive, cinematic textures and rhythm-driven improvisation, Pike brings a raw physicality to the live set, expanding Space Afrika’s atmospheric worlds into something percussive, embodied and unpredictable.
Together, they present a site-specific performance, States of Love, that moves between concert and installation, incorporating live improvisational passages that allow the work to unfold in real time. Alongside this, an accompanying sound piece, ROOM, will inhabit the Steam Room, both works forming a charged, immersive landscape where collapse and connection resonate through sound.
23:30 – 00:00 JEPH VANGER
STEAM ROOM:
Space Afrika, ROOM, sound, 120’, looped
WITH WORKS BY YORGOS PRINOS:
Visual artist Yorgos Prinos examines power and violence at the intersection of psychology and politics. Working with photography, found imagery and text, his practice confronts the charged presence of the human figure within contemporary urban life.
For States of Love and Collapse, Prinos presents a collection of photographic and text-based works that unsettles and compels. These works, each of which is drawn from a larger series, mix observation with appropriation. I Am the Lion depicts the embrace of a captive lion by a man, Franco Luis Ferrada, who in May 2016 climbed into the lion enclosure at the Santiago Zoo, stripped naked, and taunted the lions into attacking him. In Until the lion tells the story, the hunter will always be the hero, a West African proverb is transformed into a wall sculpture that merges with the exhibition space. Red Hood and Young Man with Hood, like many of Prinos’ photographic works, are unstaged images of individuals inhabiting public space in global financial capitals.
Artist Bios
Daniel Brandt is a London-based audiovisual artist, filmmaker, composer, and drummer whose work explores the dynamic interplay of sound, image, and space across film, installation, and performance. As co-founder of the ensemble Brandt Brauer Frick and as a solo artist, he has performed over 500 concerts worldwide, from Coachella, Glastonbury, Sonar, and Montreux Jazz Festival to the Berlin Philharmonie, Lincoln Center New York, Berghain, and the Royal Albert Hall, bridging classical instrumentation with electronic and club cultures. His solo practice brings together live cinema, multichannel sound, and immersive installations. Recent projects include Without Us (2025), an audiovisual stage work commissioned by the Barbican Centre, and Multi Faith Prayer Room, a sound installation premiered at Art Basel Miami in 2022 and presented at V&A East Storehouse in 2025. Brandt’s films have screened internationally, and his practice consistently pushes the boundaries between music and image, structure and spontaneity.
JJ Pálka Johnson is a London-based artist working across film, painting, and performance. Their practice explores queer and trans approaches to embodiment, intimacy, and collective learning through production and collaboration. Johnson’s debut feature documentary what’s safe, what’s gross, what’s selfish and what’s stupid (2024) premiered at BFI Flare. Their play Happy Baby will be published by Montez Press later this year. They teach Fine Art at Goldsmiths.
Space Afrika are innovators in contemporary electronic music, fusing UK dance, ambient, trip-hop, pop, modern classical, and experimental forms. Comprising Josh Inyang and Joshua Tarelle Reid, the Manchester-based duo operate across music, composition, performance, visual art, and radio. Their albums Somewhere Decent To Live (sferic, 2018) and Honest Labour (Dais Records, 2021) received widespread critical acclaim, with the latter topping Resident Advisor’s Album of the Year chart and earning DJ Mag nominations for Best Album and Best Live Act. Their work has been championed by BBC Radio 1, 6 Music and Radio 3, and presented at major venues and festivals including Southbank Centre, Berlin Atonal and Gladstone Gallery.
An active performer and producer in the UK underground, PIKE has developed a unique sonic fingerprint indebted as much to UK bass as to alt-rock, dub and avant-garde electronics. His emotive, cinematic productions bridge the physicality of analog techniques with digital sampling, unravelling these in live performances to play with textural, rhythmic and improvisational possibilities. The evolution of his practice has landed releases on 12th Isle, Scenic Route and Pain Management, while collaborative work has brought him into the studio and stage with a wide roster of international artists – Blackhaine, Space Afrika, Coby Sey, Devon Rexi, Charlie Osborne, and Raisa K among others.
Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen work across objects, installation and film. Their work looks at materials, processes, behaviours, and feelings formed by mass production of objects and animals. Recent exhibitions took place at Mostyn Gallery, Llandudno; Ghost 2565, Bangkok; Serpentine, London; Bodies of Water, 13th Shanghai Biennale; Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; Para Site, Hong Kong; HKW in Berlin and Congo International Film Festival, Goma. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and M+ Museum, Hong Kong, among others.
Tahliah Simumba, also known as TAAHLIAH, is a Scottish multidisciplinary artist and musician based in London. Moving fluidly between sound, painting, performance, and film, her practice traces the shifting lines between internal and external narratives – mapping intimacy, identity, and collective experience through experimental forms. Her critically acclaimed debut album Gramarye was nominated for Best Independent Album at the AIM Independent Music Awards and shortlisted for the Scottish Album of the Year Award in 2025.
Jeph Vanger is a sound artist, composer and DJ whose practice moves between performing arts, sound system culture, and spatial sound. His DJ practice draws on high-energy, rhythm-driven forms including baile funk, gqom, grime, and ballroom, expanded through experimental club, mutated pop structures, electronics, and dub-influenced textures. Sharp percussive structures, vocal abstraction, and Middle Eastern tonal references are ground his work in deep sensitivity to low-end frequencies. His sets prioritise embodiment, tension, and release—treating the dancefloor as a site of collective listening and transformation rather than linear progression. Alongside his DJ work, Vanger’s music compositions and sonic installations have been supported by Arts Council England, Help Musicians UK, and ARTWORKS. In 2021, he was Composer in Residence at EMS Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, where he further developed his interest in synthesis, multi-channel sound, and the physical and spatial dimensions of sound. He has collaborated extensively with choreographers and theatre directors including Chara Kotsali, Mario Banushi, and Christos Papadopoulos, with works presented internationally in cities such as New York, Taipei, Bogotá, and Montréal.
Yorgos Prinos is a visual artist whose work explores issues of power and violence at the intersection of human psychology and politics. Often focusing on the human figure in urban space, Prinos uses his own images alongside found footage from media and the internet. He holds an MFA from the Yale School of Art and has presented his work in venues across Europe, the United States, and Asia. Alongside his artistic practice, Prinos has co-edited several catalogues, contributed to various publications, and co-curated exhibitions internationally.
Alexandros Pissourios is a filmmaker and artist based in London and Cyprus. Working with 16mm film, his practice develops through sustained engagement with specific places and situations that he returns to, combining observational processes with constructed forms. In his films looking is treated as a charged act, shaping what comes into view and how it is looked at and expanding through association, allowing narrative to remain open.
Louiza Ntourou (Orlof) is an artist-filmmaker based in Athens and London. Her work reimagines everyday reality by uncovering its poetic dimensions. She has been developing a video series that is inspired by the haiku, translating its poetic principles into a form of moving image. Her practice involves spontaneous encounters in public spaces, embracing chance as a creative tool to disrupt conscious control. Her research also extends into digital spaces, where she re-contextualizes archival and found footage to explore shared personal and political moments. Her videos have been presented at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London, 2020), Hayward Gallery (London, 2020/21), Art-Athina (Athens, 2021), and Beaconsfield Gallery (London, 2024). She is currently a fellow of the Onassis Air residency programme (2025/2026).
Carlos Motta is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice examines the social and political conditions of sexual, gender and ethnic minority communities, challenging dominant narratives through strategies of self-representation. His work has been presented in major career-survey exhibitions at institutions including MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2025), Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (2023), Wexner Center for the Arts (2022), Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (2017) and Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2015). Motta has participated in leading international biennials, museum exhibitions and film festivals, including the Biennale di Venezia (2024), Musem of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, the Berlin Biennale, Carnegie International and the São Paulo Biennial. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise and grants from Creative Time and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. His works are held in major public collections including MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, SFMOMA, Museo Reina Sofía and the Centre Pompidou.
Shahryar Nashat’s work has been presented in solo presentations at institutions including Istituto Svizzero, Rome (2024–25); MASI Lugano, Switzerland (2024); Art Institute of Chicago (2023); Renaissance Society, Chicago (2023); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2020); Swiss Institute, New York (2019); and Kunsthalle Basel (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Ghost2568, DIB26, Bangkok (2025); Ecstatic: Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2023); Swiss Sculpture Since 1945, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2021); and Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Kunsthaus Zürich; Art Institute of Chicago; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
James Richards lives and works in Berlin. His practice spans moving image, sound, installation and performance, often exploring intimacy, mediation and the circulation of images and voices. Recent solo exhibitions include Our Friends in the Audience at Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo (2024); Workers in Song (with Billy Bultheel) at WIELS, Brussels, MUDAM Luxembourg, Batalha Centro de Cinema, Porto, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2023–24); and Alms for the Birds at Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2020). His work has also been shown at Malmö Konsthall, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Haus Mödrath, and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi. Richards has participated in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the Hammer Museum, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Museion Bolzano and Para Site, Hong Kong. Alongside his artistic practice, he curates film and performance programmes, including projects at Tate Modern and Bonner Kunstverein. He represented Wales at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), was nominated for the Turner Prize (2014), and received the Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2024.
YEN-CHING LIN is a London-based movement artist, choreographer and facilitator. Her independent research and creative output explore the compelling dialogue between dance, stillness, photography and film while forging a distinctive interdisciplinary approach. She has collaborated with esteemed artists and companies including Hofesh Shechter Company and Bern Ballet (under Stijn Celis), Akram Khan Company, Theo Adams Company, Stefan Jovanovic, BalletLorent, Clod Ensemble, AE, Waldorf Project, Punchdrunk, Alice Anderson, Lee Mingwei, FOS(Thomas Poulsen), Bullyache and Becky Namgaud among others.
FREDRIK TJÆRANDSEN is a London-based artist working across installation, sculpture and performance. His practice explores abstract emotional and sensory states through material processes, often working with natural rubber, plastic and atmospheric textiles. Drawing on phenomenology and natural science, he considers the body and its shifting boundaries, particularly in relation to childhood memory and the formation of self. Raised in the Arctic, Tjærandsen’s work is informed by extreme climatic conditions and the behaviour of fragile, mutable materials. His installations create immersive environments in which textiles and synthetic compounds act as unstable, weather-like systems, blurring distinctions between the human, natural and technological while foregrounding embodied and collective experience.
Curated and produced by Kostas Stasinopoulos, Curator, Live Programmes, Serpentine, Karolina Magnusson Murray, Head of Contemporary Art Programming, FOLD and Isobel Peyton-Jones, Producer, Serpentine.
