Somerset House Podcast

Somerset House

The Somerset House Podcast, shaped and sculpted by artists, explores original cultural ideas which connect listeners to the creative process. Each series goes behind the scenes at Somerset House to uncover the stories explored through our programme and creative community.  As the home of cultural innovators, Somerset House connects creativity and the artist with wider society to produce unexpected outcomes and unexplored futures, intensifying creativity and multiplying opportunity to drive artistic and social innovation. 

  1. The Process: How to authentically document your creative community?

    12月4日

    The Process: How to authentically document your creative community?

    DJ and producer, Tayo Papoola, explores how the ground-breaking photography of Jennie Baptiste documented a generation of Black British creatives.  Rhythm and Roots – Jennie Baptiste’s first major solo exhibition – opened at Somerset House in Autumn 2025, celebrating a three-decade career across music, fashion and youth identity. From the vibrating energy of London’s dancehall scene to the rise of hip hop and R&B, it is a vital visual record of a generation finding its feet – and leaving its mark.   But for Jennie, a child of the 80s and teenager of the 90s, it made total sense that photography would be a gateway into the culture. Growing up in north-west London to St. Lucian parents, her family were always taking photos. When her mother bought her a camera at 10, it never left her side as she captured the heyday of the UK’s hip hop scene and an underground culture looking to define itself.   In this episode of The Process, radio producer and DJ Tayo Papoola – who grew up alongside this creative generation – asks: what does an authentic portrayal of a creative community look like? And how do you preserve these histories for generations to come?   Tayo is joined by a set of creatives and contemporaries to Jennie who were important inspirations in the development of her practice and shaping the culture in real time.... DJ Semtex, music director Jake Nava and British Nigerian fashion designer Wale Adeyemi. Credits:   Contributors: Jennie Baptiste, DJ Semtex, Jake Nava and Walé Adeyemi  Producer and narration: Tayo Papoola    Host: Laurent John  Theme Music: Ka Baird   Sound Engineer: Mike Woolley  Executive Producer: Eleanor Ritter-Scott  The Somerset House Podcast, shaped and sculpted by artists, explores original cultural ideas which connect listeners to the creative process.   The Process is an artist-led podcast series, developed by Somerset House, which explores the new ideas, big questions and surprising tangents which emerge from the artistic process.   Drawing on the creative community both on site at Somerset House and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows artists as they explore one idea they’re currently pursuing, to see where it ends up: from financial astrology to the black renaissance, quantum listening to geometry for aliens.   Along the way, we hear from thinkers across disciplines, including artists such as Mark Leckey and Gazelle Twin on their fascination with ghosts and all things paranormal, and Hannah Diamond on the transformative potential of cute – and how these creative influences shape their practice in new and surprising ways.

    34 分鐘
  2. The Process: How does an object become erotic?

    11月6日

    The Process: How does an object become erotic?

    In this special interview edition of the Process, artist Sidsel Meineche Hansen unpacks the background to her digital commission Grumpy.   Sidsel Meineche Hansen is a Danish artist who is interested in how things are made, both through the lens of the industrial complex and material forms of craft. Her work looks at the ways gender is produced and mutated through the production of female gendered commodities in the tech and porn industry, such as the sex robot or the sex doll, exploring questions around ownership and profit.   In Grumpy, her commission for our digital platform Channel, Sidsel created a computer-animated version of the anatomical Venus - a wax model of a dissected woman, clad in pearls, which was used to teach medical students' anatomy in the 18th Century. The head of the model hangs backwards, singing softly, as we pan up over her splayed open torso, revealing only the reproductive organs and a smiling foetus   To make the work, Sidsel sourced real-life human sexual organs from a cadaver before working on the animation. In this special interview version of The Process, Sidsel unpacks the background to the work with the director of Somerset House Studios Marie McPartlin. She talks about her experience in the operating theatre, the questions it brought up about the role of the artist, the relationship between object and subject and what it was like to make the work while pregnant with her first child.     Interviewer: Marie McPartlin  Artist: Sidsel Meineche Hansen   Executive Producer: Eleanor Ritter-Scott  Producer: Alannah Chance   Host: Laurent John  Sound Engineer: Mike Woolley   Theme Music: Ka Baird  The Process is an artist-led podcast series, developed by Somerset House, which explores the new ideas, big questions and surprising tangents which emerge from the artistic process. Drawing on the creative community both on site at Somerset House and from the exhibition programme, each episode follows artists as they explore one idea they’re currently pursuing, to see where it ends up. From financial astrology to the black renaissance, quantum listening to the transformative powers of cute, along the way we hear from a cross-section of thinkers who have inspired them to help shape where it might go next.

    20 分鐘
  3. The Process: Why did the British build a hedge across India?

    3月7日

    The Process: Why did the British build a hedge across India?

    And how did it manage to disappear with barely a trace?  Artists Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser (Hylozoic/Desires) go on a journey through the archives to unearth the story of the Great Hedge of India, a 4,000km long hedge grown by the British East India Company in the 1840s, to control the flow of salt across the continent. But despite being one of the longest of its kind in history, no visual trace of the hedge can be found in the archives Ahead of their installation in the courtyard of Somerset House, Himali and David tell the story of the hedge and reflect on the complex weave of fiction, truth and silence that surrounds it. In this podcast they ask, what can nature teach us about archives? And how can art create truth retrospectively? They are joined by Dr Alexis Rider, a historian of science at Cambridge, who worked alongside the artists as a researcher on the project and Professor Rohan Deb Roy, a lecturer in South Asian History at Reading, who looks at the ways the termite undermined the authority of empire by eating into both the hedge and the official papers of the state. Produced by: Alannah Chance Presented by: Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser Series presenter: Laurent John Mixed by: Mike Woolley Theme Music:Ka Baird Additional Music:Suraj Nepal, Rahul Popawala, Ish S and  Surabhi Saraf Podcast produced in response to 'Salt Cosmologies', an exhibition at Somerset House 20 Feb – 27 Apr 2025. You can also watch a film produced about the artwork on our online platform Channel.

    30 分鐘
  4. Our Beginning | SOIL: COMMON GROUND

    1月22日

    Our Beginning | SOIL: COMMON GROUND

    Our entire existence is dependent on our relationship with soil. As awareness builds of the enormity of the ecological crisis that we are facing, a growing number of artists are engaging with soil as a material in their work.  This three part series responds to the Somerset House exhibition ‘Soil: The World at Our Feet’, unearthing soil's role in our future through the work of artists and thinkers working with it. Soil is the basis of many creation stories around the world. It is our beginning, and it is what we will return to. In Episode 1 of Common Ground we look at soil as the matter from which life emerges. Exploring growth, beginnings and the ways soil as a material offers unique opportunities for exploration.  We hear from artist Asad Raza who makes ‘neo-soil’ from scratch and covers the floor of galleries with it. Artist Eve Tagny’s work examines the cultivation of the Rose as a way to ask questions about the ways we interact with the world. Agroecologist Nicole Masters and farmer Abby Rose, lay out what soil is and why it holds the key to our survival.  The episode is set within the garden of our presenter Shenece Oretha. Working with soil has shaped her relationship to the place where she lives and informed her art practice.  SOIL: Common Ground is a three-part podcast series exploring what soil can teach us about being human, through the lens of art. Soil is unsung, and largely hidden from view. What if we were to put it in the foreground? To think of it as a collaborator?   The series launches off from the Somerset House exhibition SOIL: The World at Our Feet. Presented by Shenece Oretha Produced by Jo Barratt and Alannah Chance  Exec produced by Alannah Chance and Eleanor Ritter-Scott.  The series is mixed by Mike Woolley Original music by Andrew Pekler Episode Image: Asda Raza - credit Luca Guadagnini.

    31 分鐘
  5. The Process: More Than a Space - The Club in Black Queer History

    2024/12/05

    The Process: More Than a Space - The Club in Black Queer History

    Why has the club been so pivotal to the history of black queer placemaking?  For artist and filmmaker Topher Campbell, growing up as a Black queer man in 1980s and 90s Britain, the club provided a sanctuary from the judgement and hostility of mainstream society. It became a space for community, self-discovery, and, as a care leaver, a sense of home. As co-founder of the rukus! archive and curator of the exhibition Making a rukus!: Black Queer Histories Through Love and Resistance, Campbell reflects on how the club scene reverberates through the archive, one of Europe's largest Black LGBTQIA+ collections, and its vital role in Black queer placemaking.  In this podcast, Campbell speaks with two pioneers of the Black queer club scene: DJ Biggy C (aka Calvin Dawkins) in London, who helped create space for Black music in the capital’s predominantly white gay clubs, and US based Madison Moore, academic, DJ, and author of Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric. Madison discusses his mission to reclaim techno for the black femme community and how fabulousness can offer both mask and armour for Black queer club-goers.  Madison is an assistant professor at Brown University. For further support, we’d like to highlight the following resources:   UK Black Pride  BLKOUT  Black Beetle Health  Galop  Produced by: Alannah Chance  Presented by: Topher Campbell  Series presenter: Laurent John  Mixed by Mike Woolley  Theme Music: Ka Baird   Additional Music: Shaun J Wright and Alinka

    29 分鐘

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簡介

The Somerset House Podcast, shaped and sculpted by artists, explores original cultural ideas which connect listeners to the creative process. Each series goes behind the scenes at Somerset House to uncover the stories explored through our programme and creative community.  As the home of cultural innovators, Somerset House connects creativity and the artist with wider society to produce unexpected outcomes and unexplored futures, intensifying creativity and multiplying opportunity to drive artistic and social innovation. 

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