'Guttural Living' (2018) Sensual, ceramic and and bronze sculptures used as tools to have different kinds of conversations about embodiment and disorientation; inspired by Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology. The video here shows the dancer Serena Morgan and artist Kyla Harris having a choreographic dialogue with snippets of our workshopped conversations over top; we also worked with artist Zuleika Lebow. The tools were made at Scottish Sculpture Workshop and the workshops and film produced at METAL, Southend. By Sophie Chapman + Kerri Jefferis, shown at Ebor Studios Gallery FRANK (2019).
'Idle Acts' (2019) was the result of a 4 month residency in Beeston, South Leeds. Working with amateur actors to explore what it is like to live there, what makes a place, neighbourly relationships and the affects that produce public space. It was entirely improvised, using the actors and our own stories of living there. With Augusto Boal inspired techniques the actors played each other, made up fictional characters and responded to the locations. Recorded around Beeston by cinematographer Lou Macnamara and sound person Martha Adabambo. The work, by Sophie + Kerri, was first screened as part of Pavillion's Artist Moving Image Network programme (2020) curated by Miriam Mouffle.
'Oracular Theatre' (2020/21) was produced on residency with Craven Arts, Skipton. Made in a disused high street bank, using CGI animation, projections and storylines gleaned from headlines around the Coronavirus pandemic as well as inspiration from feminist science fiction and Video Games for the Oppressed. Storylines were created as prompts for a workshop in which participants improvised their own low fi sci fi tales. The installation was made during a national lockdown so we created this video work to document it. Voiced by Samra Mayanja, closed captions written by Bella Millroy and CGI by Andrew Walker. Video by Sophie + Kerri.