Sensual Laboratories (Open City Documentary Festival, ICA, 16 April 2026)

As a form of live multimedia performance revolving around projected light, the light show is by nature ephemeral. These one-off events are dependent on chance encounters: between inks, dyes and other substances; a mobile audience, and various modes of performance – from music, theatre or dance to the real-time projection of film loops and other still and moving-image formats. As a result, light shows are often filmed to document a transient practice as well as generate new imagery that can be remixed and cast back into films, happenings, and future performances.  
This programme opens with a selection of glass slide transparencies made in the late 1940s by the American painter and experimental film pioneer Sara Kathryn Arledge. Because glass is fragile and projectors heavy to lug around, Arledge later made several 16mm films from her hand-painted slides, which she called her “stabiles.” But not all of the works in this program are documents of performances or attempt to translate the live event onto film and video. The gloopy, amoebic forms of the liquid light show make their way into psychedelic intertitles, become the source material for vivid video effects, or are layered and superimposed to create abstract art works for multiple-projection environments at rock festivals, intermedia nightclubs, and arts labs.

Curated by Sophia Satchell-Baeza, this programme focuses on British and North American work from the 1960s and 1970s, bringing together early films by Barbara Hammer, John Smith, Jud Yalkut, Jerry Abrams, Scott Bartlett, and Mark Boyle and Joan Hills. Many of these artists merged film into their light shows, turned their light shows into films, or saw their work as part of a wider lineage of abstract and expanded cinema. Whether experimenting with colour theory or exploring free love and visionary perception, the films engage with strategies of sensory immersion and celebrate spontaneity and play. The evanescent practice of light projection is here revived and reanimated for the present.

With an introduction by Sophia Satchell-Baeza. Followed by a panel discussion with Jarvis Cocker and John Smith.

Programme
- A Selection of Glass Slide Transparencies (Sara Kathryn Arledge, USA 2019), 10 mins  
- O What A Lovely Whore (Mark Boyle, UK 1965), 5 mins 
- Chromoprobe (Mark Boyle/Sensual Laboratory, UK 1967), 5 mins
- D.M.T. (Jud Yalkut, USA 1966), 3 mins, 16mm 
- Be-In (Jerry Abrams, USA 1967), 7 mins, 16mm
- Eyetoon (Jerry Abrams, USA 1968, 8 mins), 16mm 
- OffOn (Scott Bartlett, USA 1968), 9 mins, 16mm
- Contribution to Light (Barbara Hammer, USA 1968), 4 mins
- Aldebaran Sees (Barbara Hammer, USA 1969), 3 mins
- Triangles (John Smith, UK 1972), 3 mins
- Someone Moving (John Smith, UK 1973), 5 mins
- Interior Garden II (Sara Kathryn Arledge, USA 1978), 8 mins
- Making OffOn (Scott Bartlett and Cynthia Hagens, USA 1981), 10 mins.

Games We Play (The Beursschouwburg, Brussels, 18 June 2025)

A program of experimental films for children and their carers, curated for Elephy Presents Thinking Collectively - Mother Artists.

- Children’s Game #1: Caracoles (Francis Alÿs, 1999), 6 mins
- Pas de panique, les cromagnons sont là (Atelier Graphoui, 1986), 12 mins
- Children’s Game #31: Slakken (Francis Alÿs, 2021), 6 mins
- The Breathing Lesson (Dora Garcia, 2001), 6 mins
- Jump (Shelly Silver, 1994), 1 min 14
- A Day for Cake and Accidents (Jessie Mott, Steve Reinke, 2012), 4 mins. 

Cinematic Exorcisms from the Dark Side of the 1970s (The Horse Hospital, 29 June 2024)

Shot over a few days in an abandoned mansion with performer Suzanka Fraey, the rarely-screened film Lilford Hall (1969) has Penny Slinger and Peter Whitehead collaboratively documenting the erotic and psychic intimacy between the artists in a haunting work of dark surrealism that seeks to exorcise the unspoken and taboo. This unfinished film, shown here in the full 1 hour and 20 minute cut, uses the grand and decaying estate as a Gothic stage-set for its investigation into self, desire, and the psyche. Lilford Hall will be accompanied by a live score by dark ambient noise group, The Begotten.
Ahead of an immersive exhibition of her Exorcism project at Richard Saltoun gallery, titled Exorcism Inside Out, visionary surrealist artist Penny Slinger will join us for an on-stage discussion and short reading from her celebrated book of photo-collage, An Exorcism: A Photo Romance (1977). Photographed at Lilford Hall during the making of the film, An Exorcism has been republished by Fulgur Press in a new expanded edition with text, and copies of the book will be on sale on the night.

A Cinematic Exorcism is curated by Sophia Satchell-Baeza and William Fowler.


Falling Lessons: The Films of Amy Halpern (Open City Documentary Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Close-up Cinema, 26 and 28 April 2024)

A perennial and dynamic presence in American avant-garde circles from New York to Los Angeles, Amy Halpern (1953–2022) remained dedicated to probing cinema’s special capacity to heighten perception and reveal ephemeral states of consciousness. Though her films may appear dream-like, they are designed, as she once put it, to render what it is like to be truly lucid and awake, experiencing reality in its fullness. Informed by a profound awareness of the world around her, Halpern’s rich, associative films invite us to savour the everyday in their devoted study of gesture, light, ritual, movement, and the mesmerising intensity of the gaze. Ranging from avant-garde portraiture to rapturous surveys of animal and substances engaged in constant cycles of change, Halpern’s empathetic, non-anthropocentric cinema also exudes a fierce commitment to anti-racism and a keen distrust of authority, instead invoking solidarity and individual and collective transformation. This dual programme presents a series of short films made over the course of more than three decades, almost all of which are on 16mm, as well as her only feature-length film, the monumental Falling Lessons, which is being presented here for the first time in the UK.

“Falling Lessons: The Films of Amy Halpern” is curated by Sophia Satchell-Baeza and presented in association with Sisters of the Extreme.

Programme 1:
- Access to the View (Amy Halpern, USA, 2000, 2', 16mm, sound)
- Cheshire Cat (Halpern, USA, 2012, 5', 16mm, sound)
- Ginko Yellow (Halpern, USA, 2022, 5', 16mm, silent)
- Hula (Halpern, USA, 2022, 6', 16mm, sound)
- Jane Looking (Halpern, USA, 2020, 2', 16mm, silent)
- #27 (Halpern, USA, 2019, 3', 16mm, silent)
- My Dear Evaporant (Halpern, USA, 2022, 5', 16mm, silent)
- Chabrot (Halpern, USA, 2022, 3', 16mm, sound)
- Three Minute Hells (Halpern, USA, 2012, 14', 16mm, sound)
- Unowned Luxuries #3 (Halpern, USA, 2020, 2', 16mm, silent)
- Elixir (Halpern, USA, 2012, 7', 16mm, silent)
- Cigarette Burn (Halpern, USA, 1978, 7', 16mm, silent)
- Emit a Beam, See a Light (Halpern, USA, 2022, 3', 16mm, sound)
- Vezalay Curtains (Halpern, USA, 2019, 4', digital, sound)

Programme 2:
- Injury on a Theme (Halpern, USA, 2010, 7', 16mm, sound)
- Falling Lessons (Halpern, USA, 1992, 64', 16mm, sound)

With an introduction by Kathryn Siegel.



Jane Arden: Explode the Language (British Film Institute, 9 September 2023)

At the vanguard of second-wave feminism, visionary radical creative Jane Arden progressed from acting and writing to directing experimental films that confront the limits of the self and patriarchal power. In this special afternoon, guests speakers discuss Arden’s life, ideas and legacy alongside extracts of early acting roles, rare TV interviews and a screening of her 1965 TV play The Logic Game, newly scanned by the BBC and not seen for decades, possibly not since its original broadcast. Thought to be the only woman director to solely direct a feature film in 1970s Britain, her fearless work took various shapes and dug deep from the wells of anti-psychiatry, psychodrama, psychedelia and experimental therapy workshop sessions in a bid to confront the limits of patriarchal power and the self. We also hear from a panel of speakers that includes Dr. Sophia Satchell-Baeza, Charlotte Procter (archivist and curator, LUX and Cinenova) and Dr. Tim Snelson (Demons of the Mind project). Extracts from early film roles from the 1940s are introduced by Arden's son and collaborator Sebastian Saville. For the second part, we will screen The Other Side of the Underneath, a profoundly radical document of counter-cultural thinking that pushes the limits of participatory art-making and authentic interpersonal connection. This will be followed by a discussion with original workshop participants Penny Slinger (pre-recorded) and Natasha Morgan, led by Sophia Satchell-Baeza.



Sisters of the Extreme (Tyneside Cinema, 23 January 2020)

Avant-garde filmmakers have long explored the potential of cinema to afford a visionary experience, exploring the affinities of film with trance, ritual, dream and memory, testing the play of light on the depths of the subconscious. Curators Kathryn Siegel and Sophia Satchell-Baeza’s programme Sisters of the Extreme brings together a series of films by women from the 1960s to the present day, concentrating on work that shares an occult sensibility and a concern with film’s potential to render heightened mental states, from the meditative to the ecstatic.

From films which harness the darkness of the cinema space as substance, such as Amy Halpern’s Invocation (1982), to magic and colour games in Storm de Hirsch’s rarely-screened trilogy The Color of Ritual, The Color of Thought (1964-1967), the programme moves towards the more personal, at times frightening vision of Betzy Bromberg’s exploration of life and death, love and loss, Az Iz (1983). Selected from the Projections Open Call.

Programme:

- Shaman, A Tapestry for Sorcerers (Storm de Hirsch, USA, 1966, 12', 16mm)
- Az Iz (Betzy Bromberg, USA, 1983, 37', 16mm)
- Peyote Queen (Storm de Hirsch, USA, 1965, 9', 16mm)
- Elixir (Amy Halpern, USA, 2012, 7', 16mm)
- Divinations (Storm de Hirsch, USA, 1964, 5'05, 16mm)
- Invocation (Amy Halpern, USA, 1982, 2', 16mm)



SPECTRAL/OLFACTORY (GHOST, Guest Projects, 21 October 2018)

SPECTRAL/OLFACTORY is a projection-based performance lecture I produced in collaboration with Bardo Light Show and SonicSoul. This was produced for GHOST, a multidisciplinary month-long programme of events and exhibition at Guest Projects, Yinka Shonibare’s London residency space.

Partly inspired by Brian Eno’s lecture on perfume, the lecture explores the role of synaesthesia across a range of artistic and countercultural practices. Interspersed with readings from personal “sense logs,” the performance was animated by liquid colour projections by Bardo Light Show, concrete mandala imagery by tie-dye artist Courtenay Pollock (The Grateful Dead), and an immersive soundscape by sound artist and gong practitioner SonicSoul.

Women of the Counterculture (Regent Street Cinema, 25 April 2018)

In collaboration with the Peter Whitehead Archive and Dr. Alissa Clarke, I co-produced an event focused on reevaluating women's contributions to the counterculture. Emphasising the range of women’s voices, practices and perspectives, this event involved a panel discussion, performance work by DMU postgraduate students, and a rare screening of the feature film Dope (Sheldon and Diane Rochlin, 1968) The panel discussion featured: key countercultural figure, English Boy model and Whitehead collaborator, Jenny Spires; singer-songwriter Carol Grimes; Jill Drower, writer and artist in the performance art collective, The Exploding Galaxy, and legendary British folk singer and activist Julie Felix, who performed “Needle of Death” live.

Projecting Psychedelia (Regent Street Cinema, 5 April 2018)

I curated a film program at Regent Street Cinema in collaboration with the Peter Whitehead Archive, next door to where the band Pink Floyd first formed. Billed as an evening of surprises with British underground filmmakers Antony Stern and Kevin Whitney, it included Stern’s short experimental film San Francisco (1968), which used the first recording of Pink Floyd’s legendary “Interstellar Overdrive” as its soundtrack. Whitney’s split-screen film Psychedelia includes rare footage of Syd Barrett in 1968 and Red/Green plays with the visual potential of moving coloured light priojections. Whitney’s Psychedelia was accompanied by a live performance from London space-punk band CuT and there was a chance to try the effects of the Lucia No 3 hypnagogic light machine.  

Hipgnostic presents: Sisters of the Extreme film night (The Horse Hospital, 11 September 2014)

The dark hallucinations of Sixties London’s drug scene come to the fore in this unreleased cult feature documentary by film-makers Diane (now Flame Schon) and Sheldon Rochlin. Once dubbed “more underground than the underground”, Dope (1968) remains as controversial as when it first screened, and follows a young New Zealand girl’s descent into heroin addiction. Appearing like the dark twin to Peter Whitehead’s Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London (1967), this experimental documentary chronicles the daily life of a young woman against the swinging backdrop of London’s psychedelic UFO club, the countercultural bookshop Better Books, and the drugs counter at Boots. After the film’s screening at the Locarno film festival in 1968, Variety described it as “a rugged documentary with revealing insights into the sad, touching, downbeat and sometimes tender drug scene”. Featuring artists and legends including Marianne Faithful talking about poppers, the Australian mystical painter Vali Myers, and Donovan, Dope is a fascinating insight into the dark underbelly of London’s late Sixties counterculture.

Plus Anthony Stern's Iggy the Eskimo Girl (1968). Benefit night for the Horse Hospital.