Category: Artist Studios

It’s coming home?

by Laura Lulika

BTS of me and Hang Linton recording The Champs

A little BTS of the recording of the Champs cover we did a couple weeks ago. A treat to celebrate England getting to the finals tonight! Enjoy the game!

video description: Hang Linton sits in a home music studio with dark grey soundproofing foam on the white walls and white and yellow speakers in the background, wearing black headphones, a white tshirt and black twists in his hair. In the background is a wide but small window with cream curtains, it looks sunny outside. On the window sill there is a gold lucky waving cat. Hang sings with a twisted pained look on his face, sweating from the heat, the camera zooming into his face.

[2]

by Seo Hye Lee

Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [sound of subtitles]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]
Black screen with white font subtitle at the bottom [music and sound fades]
Screen capture of [sound of subtitles]

These two images are the beginning and the end of the video work titled [sound of subtitles].

Fandom

by Laura Lulika

Two people stood outside of a large footy stadium shot slightly from below so that the stadium looms over them like an ominous space ship. It's shadowy in front of a cloudy sky. The two people are brightly lit and gaze upwards, both visible from the waist up. The person on the left has a black bob haircut and they are wearing a green and red footy shirt. The person on the right has short brown hair and head band across their forehead and a blue footy shirt with white details. They both have their hands in their pockets, they look slightly pensive like they have seen something in the sky that is about fall down in front of them.
GAA MAAD Theatre Work by Aine O’Hara and Vickey Curtis

I recently discovered Aine O’Hara’s work online. Their theatre piece pictured above, GAA MAAD, is all about being a queer footy fan in Ireland and the rejection and abuse that comes with that.

I’m really interested in fandom, the way we attach ourselves to specific teams, players, fighters etc but I especially love the way crowds move and ripple and thrash about together. It was strange and surreal to see a mass of static cardboard cutouts or screens of fans at home during the pandemic, as well as the fake crowd noise.

A sea of footy fans, almost all of them have their arms raised up and almost all of them are wearing red and white footy outfits. Many have large England flags which are a white rectangle with a red cross which they have added their hometown names, their own names or their own slogans to such as 'Tommo', 'Bollocks' and 'Redhill', which they have hung off the edge of the stands.
England fans in Germany in 2006

I also like it when they do close ups on the telly of disappointed and sad fans when their team is losing, even better if they are really dressed up for the occasion with face paint, a comedy hat and a flag wrapped around them, decorating their downturned face.

Football fans in blue and yellow sat in the stands of the stadium. Central is someone in a full body blue and yellow morph suit with a flag wrapped around their neck with their head in the hands, all the fans around them look sad and fed up too/
Three football fans all dressed in orange with spiky orange, blue and white hats on with 'Holland' written on them, orange sunglasses on their heads and orange bracelets and lipsticks, leaning on a blue pole at the edge of the stand in the stadium looking sad and fed up.

Body Builder – costume test and music teaser

by Laura Lulika

An improvised film test of the muscle costume and PE kit made for me by Max Allen with a new song that I’m making with Hang Linton. A million points to anyone who can figure out where the sample in the song is from or who it is.. I just tried out some different poses and gestures from my research, some different lighting and filmed it on a phone on my studio bed.

Visual Description: I’m wearing a sheer mesh muscle suit, long sleeved top and trousers, and a shiny blonde mullet wig, my own naked body is visible underneath. I am washed in orange light, stood on a white platform in a white room with a dark coloured floor. I pose and flex like a body builder and pull strained open mouthed faces. I am wearing a footy tabard over the top of the muscle suit, it has ‘FORGOT ME PE KIT’ and ‘Ladette’ written on it, it’s blue and red. I’m washed in a bright green light. I lift a footy banner or scarf that says ‘BUGGER OFF’ on it, it has tassles hanging from it, I’m swaying from side to side, I drop it to the floor and direct my right arm out to the side as if declaring something. I am back to wearing just the muscle suit and wig, this time washed in a gentle blue light and lying down on the bed, flexing and posing and pulling strained open mouthed faces.

Audio Description: An electronic bassline track that sounds a little bit like Prodigy with some trip-hop spacey tones thrown in. It features a repeated sample of a middle aged person with a strong accent that is probably from Essex or the East End of London saying in an irritated voice, ‘A loada rubbish, them lot up in the Houses of Parliament, terrible’.

[1]

by Seo Hye Lee

Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are black and white images of clay covered hands shaping a round shaped pottery on wheel. The person is wearing long sleeved shirt that is rolled up at lower arms. The images have different subtitles. On the left image it reads [turning], middle image reads [sound of remembering fondly], the right image reads [soaring orchestra music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping pottery on a wheel. These images have different subtitles. On the left video it reads [holding], middle video reads [sound of listening inward], the right video reads [♪♪♪].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background
Screen capture of video with white font subtitle with black background. All 3 stills of video from videos are identical and are placed side by side. They are coloured images of clay covered hands shaping brown pottery on wheel. The images have different subtitles. On the left it reads [shaping], the middle video reads [sound of emptiness in the room], and the right reads [mysterious string music].
Screen capture of 3 video with white font subtitle with black background

[turning] [sound of remembering fondly] [soaring orchestra music] [holding] [sound of listening inward] [♪♪♪] [shaping] [sound of emptiness in the room] [mysterious string music]

Audio will be silent in my piece for the final outcome of this residency- I aim for the subtitles to show the endless possibilities of what the words would sound like for the viewers.

Video Testing

by Seo Hye Lee

Video Projection Testing on wall

I have been experimenting with multiple videos using Premiere Pro and After Effects. It has been a daunting task to figure out the dimensions and creating subtitles! This is a snippet of what I’ve been working on today in the impromptu ‘studio’ space- a quickly emptied out space in a small living room wall where I pushed the sofa to the side to create enough space for the video projection. There are three videos playing at once, all are the same videos of hand throwing the wheel, shaping round-shaped pottery. On individual screens, there are different subtitles, on left there is an ‘action’ based subtitle ([turning] & [creating shape]) and in the middle, there’s the abstract subtitle ([sound of shifting relationship] & [sound of remembering]) and on right there’s a ‘music’ based subtitle([Dramatic theme playing] & [♪♪♪]). This video is originally from Craft / Potting / Bookbinding Practice Film from Bexley Local Studies & Archive Centre located in London’s Screen Archives. I am going in the direction where I would like to experiment with the same video but with different subtitles to ‘alter’ the experience for the viewer – changing the perception of the event with the poetic language of the subtitle.

Screen capture of 3 videos playing side by side, each individual video shows a pair of hands shaping brown clay pottery on wheel. Each individual video has white subtitles on a black background- the video on the left reads [throwing], the middle video reads [sound of emptiness in the room], the video on the right reads[dramatic theme playing]. All three videos are on black box.
Screen capture of 3 videos playing at once
Screen capture of 3 videos playing side by side, each video shows a pair of hands shaping brown clay pottery on the wheel. The individual videos have white subtitles on a black background. The subtitle on the left reads [gently holding], the middle subtitle reads [sound of listening inward], the right subtitle reads [soaring orchestra music]. All three videos are on black box.
Screen capture of 3 videos playing at once

This week, I am planning to experiment with multiple different videos and show these simultaneously at a more playful pace. Please leave a reply to this post to comment or ask any questions if you have any! 🙂

[_____]

by Seo Hye Lee

I would like to share some subtitles I have collected in my notes on my phone.

Music-related: [Music and sound fades] [Soaring orchestra music] [Music intensifies] [Mysterious string music] [Somber Music] [Dramatic theme swelling] [Dramatic string music builds] [Music gets faster] [♪♪♪] [***]

Action-related: [humming] [screaming] [breathing] [footsteps approaching] [crying] [wailing] [chattering] [sighing] [sobbing] [yawning]

How can these ‘objective’ subtitle be poetic in its own way? Below are some I’ve wrote.

[Sound of shaping context] [Sound of shifting relationship] [Sound of still silence] [Sound of emptiness in the room] [Sound of seeing] [Sound of communicating gently] [Sound of listening inward] [Sound of whispering sweet nothings] [Sound of worlds shattering] [Sound of remembering fondly]

Body Work, Breakdowns and Burn Out: in resistance of Hyperability

by Laura Lulika

A grey background with a 3d diagram of a silver car body. Over the top is the title 'CAR BODY CONSTRUCTION' in red text. Around the diagram are the names of the different car body parts with black lines pointing to their corresponding section, these include 'roof panel', 'panel trunk', 'centre pillar' and 'scuttle base'.

Getting towards the end of this residency and my body feels close to a burn out. Working while your six month old wakes you up every hour during the night like a sleep torture program has been.. hard. My insides are starting to jolt and shudder.

I have been considering the way we describe the shell of an automobile as a ‘body’, an external casing which holds in all of the car or lorry’s guts. There are auto body repair shops for when you damage your body or car and truck body builders for when you want an upgrade.

Researching this also led me to a strange trend of body builders (the weight lifting type) posing with their cars and this amazingly comical article to help body builders choose the best car for them which says ..

‘As bodybuilders, you cannot survive without a car. A good and big car will not only look proportional to you but will also serve your needs adequately.’

A large white expensive car stands in what looks like a slightly mountainous desert. On the bonnet lies someone in a bikini and heels with an expressionless face
via guagemagazine

And of course there is the ‘sports car’.

These automobile bodies can be symbols of wealth, power, authority, capitalism, work, burn out or protest. During times of social unrest and resistance, the news and media is often littered with images and videos of burning cars (ACAB). When our physical bodies become exhausted by the pressures of capitalism and the inequalities of structural oppression, we also burn out and break down.

three British police vans parked in a narrow street at night. They are parked at angles and not in a straight line. The left van is on fire which is bursting out of the front window and sides. The bonnet is covered in graffiti which says 'kill' and 'ACAB'. Smoke is billowing and filling the top part of the image, it is glowing orange and red from the fire and blue from the van's lights. The vans in the middle and on the right are not on fire. Their headlights and blue emergency lights are on. A silhouette figure of a person is visible in the foreground on the right from behind.
police vans burning at a Bristol ‘kill the bill’ protest earlier this year via theguardian

I like to think of myself as a monster truck; big, slow, colourful and garish, with very little functional use other than for fun.. a performative body that rests a lot and comes out bouncing and blazing for a show every so often when I feel like it, only to inevitably and predictably crash and burn at the end.

A pink and cream ice cream monster truck with large oversized wheels and a big soft white whip on top with a cherry.
Dragon Ice monster truck, a compact monster truck with a blue dragon body design with scales and teeth and spikes and big wheels. There are colourful logo stickers on the black undercarriage. It is doing a small jump over a very muddy ramp in a stadium filled with people in the background.

HUGE

by Laura Lulika

I’ve been researching bodybuilder poses, the reasons for them and the way they accentuate the muscle definition. Scrolling through Google images at these magazine covers, there are obvious themes that arise. The women are very rarely as muscly as the men, they are often used as props to the central male figure or they are overtly feminised and sexualised in bikinis with big flowing hair. I couldn’t find any magazine covers with any variation of this apart from Renee Campbell, a bodybuilder who is trying to challenge the standard look. There weren’t any covers of her but the photos from an article on CNN definitely had a different energy and aesthetic.

The positions range from intimidating to comical, one of my favourites is the one where they look like they’re pushing an invisible shopping trolley. When I look at a lot of these images and bodies all at once, shiny, bulging, smiling, angry, tanned, flexed bodies, it starts to make me feel weird, they remind me of rotisserie chickens just spinning on repeat. But they are also somehow very fascinating and impressive.

The limitations of mobility that pushing your body to this size causes makes me wonder if they are really hyperable or if they are just a visual symbol of hyperability.

Renee Campbell via CNN

Lulikenstein’s Mascot Monster Bodies

by Laura Lulika

A faint grass background with a creature diving in the foreground, their body made up of several mascot limbs, a yellow angry looking cartoonesque sunburst face, a raised right arm or wing of an eagle mascot, brown with black feather and a white gloved hand, the left arm, also raised, is a green glistening wrist and hand poking out of a brown long sleeve, the face melts down into the body, grey fur with a white fur belly oval, the left leg has blue shorts with a small logo, a yellow leg, white sports socks and black and a red puffy mascot nike trainer, the right is a thick beige fur trunk with a huge bright blue hoof. The legs are bent and arched backwards.

This is an experiment into creating my own hybrid Frankenstein mascot monster bodies in footy diving positions. I would love to do this with irl second hand mascot bodies one day for an installation, taking a few apart and sewing bits back together, so it’s cool to be able to do some digital mock-ups and think about how I can use them sculpturally in an online exhibition to accompany the video work. I’m thinking about some t-shirts one day maybe too. I’m looking forward to developing this idea and creating more of these.

This was created with A LOT of help from Hang Linton and their stellar photoshop skills.

Essential Energy Bingo: Roasting my childhood danceschool

by Laura Lulika

A grid of bingo about my childhood danceschool. At the top is a white text box that says 'Essential Energy Bingo!' In the middle of the grid is a tile that says 'EE Family with a purple heart emoji'. At the bottom is a text box to fill in your name which is blank. The background is a sickly pink plaid pattern. The grid has the following options to circle: - Old enough to have trained in the old studio: Taken an IDTA exam, Had your costume fitted by Joanie, Been to a presentation evening, Had a family member chaperone, Been taught by Dawn, Megan and Alex, Remember the old tap floor! Reworn a costume for fancy dress, Designed your own costume!! Had a mic on during the show, Had a really wuick change! Had a parent in the show, Been to Musical Theatre, Been in the 'Barkind Badger', Sat out because of an injury, Had Laura for tap, Bought a show DVD, Injured yourself at dance, Forgot an examiners name, Cried after a show! Had more than one pair of pom poms, Been in the second half, Had your hair done before an exam, Had a costume disaster after a quick change.

I think the closest I ever got to athleticism was attending the local dance school, Essential Energy, as a child and young teenager. I refused to do P.E at school because I hated doing hockey and netball in the freezing cold, but I spent an untold amount of hours at this tiny dance hall on an industrial estate in the Midlands.

Recently my sister sent me this bingo that a former student had made about the school that they had posted on Facebook. We couldn’t help but coming up with our own version because it was such a toxic place to be as a child learning about your body… so here it is, Essential Energy Bingo.. The Real Version (made in collab with my sister who would like to stay anonymous lol):

A grid of bingo about my childhood danceschool. At the top is a white text box that says 'Essential Energy Bingo!' In the middle of the grid is a tile that says 'EE Family with a purple heart emoji'. At the bottom is a text box to fill in your name which I have filled in with my name, Lulika. The background is a sickly pink plaid pattern. The grid has the following options to circle: Old enough to have trained in the old studio! Ridiculed by the school owner for not being able to afford all of the exams, Watched the school owner do her signature sexy solo routine in lingerie at the end of every school presentation show, cringed at all the popular kid's parents in the adult dance classes, Became aware of the rife ED culture in older students and teachers, Threatened with being held back if you didn't find a way to pay for the exams, Reworn a costume for fancy dress, Been required to bring ridiculous props to class with you.. bucket and mop anyone? Put at the back because you were struggling with the routine in the show, Had a really quick change! Made to sit outside on the floor of an industrial estate for hours during show rehearsals, Saw parents arguing with the owner, Heard rumours about the parents in the adult classes 'wife swapping' and falling out about it, Sat out because of an injury, Bullied by one of the popular girls, Forced to go to 'limbering' classes when you hit puberty where you got said injury, Injured yourself at dance, You still have the injury as an adult, Cried after class, Told your body was too undeveloped to be in the sexy second half of the show, Been in the second half, Told your hair was too messy for an exam, Had inappropriate comments made about your body.

Body Builder Vol II – Costume

by Laura Lulika

With a mid noughties, year 9, gelled up hair style and matrix like glasses, we are getting roared at by a man in a muscle suit and tight leather trousers. His hands are clenched in fists at waist height, knuckles facing each other so the bulging suit and rounded arms create a strange ring of meat.

I have been working with fashion designer, Max Allen, to literally build a body. You can see the final product in my studio. I am going to use this costume for a choreographic film experiment, superimposing this performative figure onto my own physical body. Here is some of our inspo:

Like a super hero, fists on waist and chest puffed out, stands Big Daddy. Thick thighs shoot from calf high black boots. A white leotard has Big Daddy written in block capitals. They are wearing a union jack crop top that is split down the middle, exposing the deep circular neck of the leotard. Big Daddy has an emotionless face, rather large and shiny chin while sporting icy white hair.
On top of a green background is a person in a red hoodie and white bib. We can only see their chest, no hands, no head. They are wearing a white bib which saying 'Doping Control' in bold, black all caps.
A comic book image. On top of a glowing red background, we are shown the transformation process of Jennifer Walters into She-Hulk. From grey to green, busting and shredding from her normal clothes, She-Hulk dominates the image with her wide stance, big hair, big muscles, big tits and tiny white and blue leotard.
A person with long dark hair and black socks stands there with a wide grin and one fist raised like they're about to pump it in a 'YES' type celebration. This person is wearing a comically large inflatable muscle suit with beige skin, dark brown muscle contours and a red bikini.
Macho Man Randy Savage in all his might, standing on stage beneath a spotlight. Wearing a yellow cowboy hat covered in red stars with a big sparkly 'M' on the front, he is wearing 80's shutter shades, has long brunette hair and a big fluffy beard. Randy stands legs wide and arms flexed to create the shape of a very thick pitchfork. He is wearing a black jumpsuit covered in tassels. One half red, the other half yellow. Randy also has tassels tied around his arms to emphasise his already bulging biceps.
A yellow cycling jersey with red shoulder sections. White, red and blue sponsorship logos litter the jersey to a landfill like state.
A bright and colourful, candy bar like, collection of football scarves from across the world. They run vertically up the image with all text turned 90 degrees clockwise also.

Home Help

by Laura Lulika

A venn diagram of two interlinking black line circles. On the right is the text 'Sports and Fitness \People' and two semi transparant images, one of a very muscly man shown topless from the abs upwards holding a gun shaped massager with the end ball on his chest emitting vibrating rays. Just to his right is a woman in sports wear with a blonde ponytail, holding the same massager with the ball on her shoulder, she has her eyes closed and she is smiling. In the left section it says 'People with chronic pain' with two images, one is of a woman from the behind angle and from the shoulders up, she has her hair in a bun and she is smiling and holding a large arched stick onto her shoulder. The image is black and white and the point on her back where the massager stick is touching is a red glowing patch. Above is an image of someone lying down shown from the chest upwards, they have an inflatable looking neck brace type apparatus around their neck, their eyes are closed and in the background their are some skeleton bones. In the middle section it says 'body massager machines' and there is an image of a a blue glowing graphic person from behind, hunched over with their spine visible and glowing yellow, in the foreground there is a back massager that looks like a black cushioned tray, there is a spine flopped over it glowing purple. There is a small black lemon shaped pump floating to the left of the massager.
A venn diagram I made

I am really interested in the aesthetic, performative and sculptural qualities of at-home health, care and wellness apparatus. I have used some in the past within installations and performance costumes. The vast array available symbolises a huge deficit in the care we receive from conventional Western health care systems. Many people seek out different types of at-home remedies due to a lack of access to a diagnosis and the required treatments, usually as a result of the structural ableism, racism, classism and fatphobia that is rampant within our healthcare institutions.

I noticed recently that one of these items, at-home self massaging devices, have become appealing to another group. I have always known them in the context of people with chronic pain but I recently saw adverts containing sports personalities endorsing them for pain related to sporting activities.

I find the way these items are advertised often very creepy and unsettling. They are usually demonstrated by perfectly polished and glowing, mannequin-like or cyborg-esque, smiling slim white women. I don’t think anyone really looks like this when they are reaching in desperation and pain for their neck hammock or ice pack hat, I definitely don’t.

A person with a purple padded hat or cap that covers the entire head and comes down over the eyes and to the end of the nose. They are smiling with their head tilted upwards with blonde straight hair sticking out the top of the cap.
A smiling person with brown hair tied up in a ponytail and a white vest top on. They are smiling with eyes closed looking content. They are visible from the chest upwards with their back against a door and a black hammock or sling under their head attached to a black strap which goes up to the top of the door with another strap hanging down being held in the hand by the person using the apparatus. A small circle of another image is in the top left showing the other side of the door with the end of the strap attached to a black ball.
Two older people sat at a table facing each other visible from the waist up, they are smiling and looking happy. In the foreground on the table is a round disc like piece of equipment. It's black with a golden spine glowing centrally and wavy blue lines around it as well as 3 buttons either side on both sides.
A thick purple pink belt with small white spiky discs attached to it.
A person lying down wearing a sky blue and grey padded full body suit with several grey straps on the torso and legs. They have some kind of thick black and white mask over the top half of their face and they are lying on a pink hospital bed which seems to be floating in mid air. There is a plastic tube coming from the center of the torso attached to some kind of white gadget which is on the bed. In the foreground their is another floating white appliance with several grey wires coming out of it. It has a black screen with blue text on it. The sleeves and trousers have no hands or feet coming out of them and the entire image has an eery futuristic quality.

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