Step Forward: Sonic Visions

Drawing on the London Community Video Archive’s extensive collection this free-of-charge program showcases films, live performances, and sonic artworks, alongside an audio-visual exhibition, to explore the intimate relationship between music, community and visual culture in a grassroots venue, Ormside Projects dedicated to all three.

Rarely seen productions, including a recently reedited edition of Carol Jacob’s Step Forward (1988), a People-to-People Channel 4 documentary about South London’s Black music scene will be screened alongside contemporary films and live performances by DJs and selectors, including Lord Tusk and Living Gatlato, as well as a specially commissioned audio-lecture by Edward George and Ben Swaby Selig’s remarkable audio-visual piece Sound Clash (first exhibited at Frieze in 2024).

*The exhibition opens at 5:30 pm on Sunday 24th November and will be available to access throughout the week during the accompanying screening and live performance series (see below for further details).

*Please note that Ormside Projects is principally a live music venue that is accessed via a flight of stairs and will be taking donations in support of Palestine throughout the programme.

*The programme is curated by Sound Artist and Curator Ben Swaby Selig (V&A East/ Frieze) and Researcher, Jessica Boyall (Royal Holloway, University of London) and generously funded by the Arts Council, England.

Sunday 24 November (Opening): The program launches with Carol Jacob’s remarkable documentary about South East London’s 1980s Black music scene which, featuring interviews with musicians and academics, including Smiley Culture and Paul Gilroy, was commissioned by Channel 4 through the People to People strand.
* The screening of Step Forward begins at 6:30pm and is followed by a panel discussion between Carol Jacobs; producer, selector and, curator, Lord Tusk and Tony Dowmunt, (Emeritus Professor of Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, and co-director of the LCVA). Afterwards they’ll be music from DJ & NTS radio host, Living Gatlato.

Tuesday - 26 November
Punk tapes from the LVCA will be screened aside Rock My Religion (Dan Graham, 1984), a no wave film analysing the emergence of rock music as creed.
* Screenings begin at 7:30 pm, followed by music from Jim Janco, curator of the People Drift club night series, and member of the bands No and Permission.

Wednesday - 27 November
Writer, researcher, and musician Edward George presents a live episode of his ongoing radio series The Strangeness of Dub which, combining critical theory, social history, cross-genre musical selection and live dub mixing, explores dub’s dimensions, spaces and influences.
*begins at 7:30 pm

Thursday - 28 November
To close the program, Ben Swaby Selig curates a series focusing on black industrial sound and sonic futures. Screenings include:
The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah/ Black Audio Film Collective, 1996), a hybrid documentary investigating the origins and impact of Afrofuturism and techno music partly through incorporating interviews with musicians, such as DJ Spooky, Goldie, and Derrick May, and the perspectives of cultural theorists and authors including Kodwo Eshun, Samuel R. Delaney and Octavia Butler.
Iwoyi: within the echo (Tayo Rapoport and Rohan Ayinde 2024), an exploration of the Black radical imagination and the potential of Black British music to manifest reparative futures.
Collective Hum (B.O.S.S. 2019), an exploration of the polyphony of collectivity in the desires, motivations and stories that foreground the histories & present(s) of Black British sound
Sound Clash (Ben Swaby Selig & Hannah Oliver, 2024) a collaborative accompaniment to the sonic artwork featured in the exhibition itself.
*Screenings begin at 7 00pm and will be followed by a discussion between Ben Swaby Selig, Kodwo Eshun (Member Otolith Group and cultural theorist/ lecturer at Goldsmith University), Tayo Rapoport and Rohan Ayinde. Afterwards, they'll be music from Lord Tusk .