A Map of the Pit

Part I 

Gregg Bordowitz, Gone Missing 2024, HD Video, colour, sound, 2 min 30 sec, English with English subtitles

A welcome, a summoning.

P. Staff, HEVN 2022, HD video, colour, sound, 5 min, English with English subtitles

An intoxicating mix of hand-painted film and digital footage, layered with poetry and industrial sounds. In HEVN, P. Staff continues their exploration of the fragility and resilience of queer and trans bodies.

Errol Morris, Stairway to Heaven 2001, HD video, colour, sound, 23 min 25 sec, English with English subtitles

This short documentary focuses on Temple Grandin, an autistic scientist and activist known for her innovative work in animal welfare. As part of Morris’ First Person series, the film explores Grandin’s ‘visual thinking’—a way of understanding the world that shaped her groundbreaking designs for humane livestock handling.

Megan Fernandes & Sa’dia Rehman, IF THE NSA CALLS, I’M WRITING ABOUT CLOWNS 2025, HD video, colour, sound, 2 min 30 sec, English with English subtitles

In early 2025, Fernandes and Rehman asked twenty Black, brown, and queer friends in the U.S. to share personal stories about an open wound. The resulting video weaves together a longform poem by Fernandes and a collage of footage by Rehman.

Gary A. Boyd, Autochthonousity: Disenchantment & Displacement in Mining Earth and Bodies 2025, lecture performance, 17 min, English with BSL interpretation

A newly conceived presentation for Tate Modern, Boyd draws on history, literature, and original research to examine the deep connections between coal mining, architecture, and social formation. His insights provide a critical backdrop to Mire Lee’s Hyundai commission.

Part II

James Richards, Negative Hands 2024, HD video, black and white, sound, with English subtitles

Richards overlays subtitles from Marguerite Duras’s 1979 film Les mains négatives onto Tony Conrad’s 1966 experimental film Flicker. Conrad’s analog classic is re-made here as a digital ‘surrogate’—an homage, a love letter, a flickering meditation on memory and desire.

Amina Ross, Man’s Country 2021, HD video, colour, sound, 8 min 02 sec, English with English subtitles

Man’s Country is an imaginary queer bathhouse named after an existing one in Chicago—a space for rethinking masculinity, belonging, and personhood. This video maps out the space, drawing from Ross’ research into underground queer venues and utopian possibilities.

Jumana Manna, Blessed Blessed Oblivion 2010, HD video, colour, sound, Arabic with English subtitles

Inspired by Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1963), Manna’s film is a portrait of male ‘thug’ culture in Palestine. At once parodic and sincere, it captures a scene of masculinity through material culture and media, critiquing stereotypes while embracing their seductiveness.

Megan Fernandes, Sonnets of the False Beloveds with One Exception or Repetition Compulsion 2023, live reading and HD video, colour, sounds, with English subtitles

Fernandes’ reading features a crown of sonnets, each named after a different city. In Fernandes’ ferocious, accelerated prose, cities emerge no longer as bare backdrops to their depicted scenes of transient desire, but as stages, witnesses.

Lucy Beech and James Richards, A Map of The Pit 2025, HD video with live accompaniment, performed by Sarah Dacey and Rosie Middleton

An experimental collaboration combining moving image and live performance featuring covers of I Want You to Know Me by White Light, and Still They Move by Sarah Neufeld and Colin Stetson.

Below are biographies of participants working on new commissions only. The full list of artists will be shared at the event.

Lucy Beech

Lucy Beech is an artist whose practice revolves around collaboration and encompasses filmmaking, choreography, research, and writing. Forthcoming and recent presentations of their work include: New Musuem, NY (2025) Between Bridges Berlin, DE; Museum of Contemporary Art Bordeaux, FR; Fondazione MAST Bologna, IT (2024); and Kunstinstituut Melly, NL; among others. 

Gary A. Boyd

Gary A. Boyd is Professor of Architecture at University College Dublin. His monograph Architecture and the Face of Coal: Mining and Modern Britain (published by Lund Humphries) won the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion for contribution to architectural history in 2023.

Megan Fernandes 

Megan Fernandes is a writer living in NYC. Her third book of poetry, I Do Everything I’m Told (Tin House 2023), was named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, Vogue, The Rumpus, ElectricLit, LitHub, etc. Fernandes is an Associate Professor of English and the Writer-in-Residence at Lafayette College where she teaches courses on poetry and critical theory. 

Sa’dia Rehman 

Sa’dia Rehman (all pronouns) is a nomadic multidisciplinary artist. Notable exhibitionss and residencies include: The New Art Gallery Walsall, Wexner Center for the Arts, Pakistan National Council of the Arts, ArtLab at Harvard University, Art Omi, and Edward Albee Foundation.

James Richards

James Richards was born in 1983 in Cardiff, Wales, and is based in Berlin. His practice includes moving image, music, and curatorial projects. Richards was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2014. In 2017 he represented Wales at the 57th Venice Biennale and was awarded the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2024.

This event will be BSL interpreted.

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