Art Historian Dr Pandora Syperek and Principal Curator of Mammals at the Natural History Museum, Richard Sabin, will join Sam for the discussion.
A looped screening of Chapters 1-5 will also run on 18-19 October, 10am-5pm in the Stanley Evernden Studio so you can drop in on either day.
About the film:
In the present day, a story is unearthed of a whale body that became a world of dinner parties and mayoral speeches. In a possible future, a group of those-who-were-left-behind (or, those-who-chose-to-stay) have made a home inside the body of a whale. They find themselves contemplating this new world and speculating on the state of things outside – a world ravaged by a climate crisis which they survived by turning to the ocean. At a crossing between the present day and this potential future, a lone figure sings a lament for the body of the world’s last whale.
Deep in The Eye and The Belly is an ongoing body of work entwining stories of cetacean bodies with imagined oceanic futures in which these bodies become shelter for humans who returned to the oceans in the wake of climate collapse. Through a series of five chapters that blend documentary, song, improvisation and theatrical monologues, the films meditate and ask questions on the entangled nature of human and non-human relations, the notion of community, bodily transformation and the possibilities of an oceanic future.
Book your place for the screening and panel discussion.
About the artists
Sam Williams is an artist working across moving-image, collage, choreography and text. Sam lives and works in London, where he is a studio resident at Somerset House Studios. Sam has exhibited, performed and screened work at institutions including Chisenhale Gallery, Tate Britain and Oberhausen Film Festival. Sam has been artist in residence at Rupert, Lithuania (2022), PRAKSIS, Oslo (2018) and in 2021 was selected as one of ten artists forming the Wysing Arts Centre Syllabus, a peer-led alternative education program. From 2010 until her death in 2016 he worked closely with the British choreographer Rosemary Butcher and now works towards the preservation of her legacy and archive.
Sam's ongoing research focuses on multispecies entanglements, ecological systems, bodies-as-worlds and folk mythologies and how they can inspire ideas for present and future ways of non-human-centric living.
Dr Pandora Syperek researches the intersections of art and science, gender and the nonhuman within cultures of display. She is currently Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Loughborough University London and Visiting Fellow at the V&A Research Institute. Pandora is co-investigator on the Paul Mellon Centre-funded research project ‘Exhibiting Oceans in the UK Today’ and co-lead on Loughborough’s Institute of Advanced Studies’ 2023-24 annual theme ‘Gestation: Bodies, Technologies, Ecologies, Justice’.
Richard Sabin’s curatorial work is primarily focused on the study of cetaceans, and using the Natural History Museum’s world-class research collections, Richard is collaborating with colleagues from around the world to generate new scientific data from old Museum specimens. He is currently exploring historical contaminants and stress levels in baleen whales using wax earplugs and sperm whale population structure using teeth. He supports wildlife conservation, UK and international law enforcement through his endangered species identification work and is NHM advisor to the UK Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme.
Accessibility
The studio is located on the ground floor and there is step-free access into the building. There is an accessible toilet close by on the ground floor corridor.
For more information about the venue, including photographs, view the access guide for Martin Hall on AccessAble.
If you have any specific access requirements then please contact LUArts@lboro.ac.uk in advance of booking or visiting and we will do our best to accommodate them.