Untitled (ETNA) by Jade Blackstock

Untitled (ETNA) is a performance by Jade Blackstock, set on Mount Etna, a 3,403-metre active volcano in Catania, Sicily. Traces of footprints etched into the snow mark the artist’s path to the site. Jade carefully shovels away layers of snow, revealing a hollow in which she slowly embeds herself, her body contacting the black ash underneath. This intimate gesture invites contemplation on the delicate relationship between human and nature, exploring themes of belonging, solitude, and meditative connection. Captured by Alex Gulino using both drone and handheld cameras, the performance reflects on presence and the sacredness of place.

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Grand Isle by Heather Hansen

Grande Isle is a short film by artist Heather Hansen and photographer Bryan Tarnowski, with music by Dustan Louque, capturing Heather’s Emptied Gestures series. Heather, recalling the genesis of film, explains “at that time I wanted to reconnect to the origins of my kinetic drawing practice. I told Bryan about a time years earlier at the beach with my son when we had been drawing in the sand with our feet doing ballet turns and when I looked back on the tracks I had the idea to try something like that on canvas. At that time I was living in a warehouse space with a community of artists in New Orleans, and this collaboration with Bryan and also Dustan on music was one of the many projects we worked together on. It was a very exciting and creative time period and there was a fantastic sense of camaraderie and community”.

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Spin Down Sky by Megan Rooney

Spin Down Sky is a dance performance developed by Megan Rooney in collaboration with Temi Ajose, Leah Marojevic, Tyrone Isaac-Stuart and Eva Herzog. Each collaborator brought their own knowledge and experience of painting, dance and music to the performance, exploring a shared idea across different media. The performance is a love story in which a night butterfly finds herself exploring the boundaries of a forbidden space in which she is ensnared by a bolas spider. The two dancers make contact and part ways, their movements mirroring the different ways we relate to each other, as well as to the precarious ecological systems of the world around us.

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Petroleum Jelly by Olive Hardy X Lydia Walker

Petroleum Jelly is a durational performance which takes place in a shop window, on this occasion at Window135 in South East London. The performers, Olive Hardy and Lydia Walker, move between one another using various tools and their hands to press, carry, clean and smudge petroleum jelly on the glass. Their image in turn is continuously revealed and concealed whilst being framed by natural light. The performance was devised through a collaboration between Hardy and Walker, with thanks to Window135 for hosting the performance, and Joseph Quimby for providing the soundtrack of the film, a shortened edit highlighting the two-hour performance.

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The Hug by Daphne van de Velde

The Hug is a short film by Daphne van de Velde about the longing for contact in a world where people have to live in isolation, often in fear of intimacy. The work suggests a hunger for skin and a desire for real human contact: the feeling of connection between our bodies through screens. Van de Velde’s work explores perceptions of the body in the digital age, questioning how we conceptualise corporeality through flat screens which have become the default way we engage with one another.