Multidisciplinary artist Freeka Tet on taking a hacker’s approach to create playful, subversive works of music and visual art. Freeka Tet can’t decide whether he’s a hacker, a magician or a sell-out. This might be because he spends most of his time inhabiting all of three of these roles. During his conversation with Fact he emphasises the importance of one of his many self-administered tattoos, the seemingly nonsensical phrase ‘ou ou et ou ou et et’, which curls across his chest in spidery cursive. “If you translate it into English it means: ‘or or and or or and and’, he explains. “Are you an ..read more

REVERB features 18 installations including new works by Theaster Gates, Es Devlin, Julianknxx and Caterina Barbieri, as well as Devon Turnbull’s Hi-Fi Listening Room Dream No.1. Theaster Gates, Devon Turnbull, Caterina Barbieri, Jeremy Deller, Carsten Nicolai, Es Devlin and Virgil Abloh will feature as part of REVERB, a major multimedia exhibition exploring the intersection of art and sound curated by The Vinyl Factory, opening at 180 Studios on 23 May, 2024. The largest show of its kind, REVERB will bring together over 100 artists and musicians working across visual arts, music, film and live ..read more

Lyra Pramuk on how collaboration, space and healing are central to her live performance. Lyra Pramuk’s artistry has been documented meticulously. The Berlin-based singer, composer, producer and performance artist is known for her dedication to metaphysical spirituality, her unwavering sensibility, and how, the two manifest via her spin on electronically-focused, futuristic folk music. But the being Lyra Pramuk becomes on stage is less describable. Through collective healing rituals, Lyra Pramuk uses collaborative learning and performance practices to invite audiences on an intimate journeys th ..read more

Audiovisual pioneers Kristina Karpysheva and Alexandr Letsius on creating colossal, mind-bending installations. 404.zero have become an underground phenomenon with immersive architectural installations, a debut album and now a forthcoming computer game all on their CV. They are like artists who would emerge in a William Gibson novel — avoiding the focus on the individual, constantly in search of the new and darkly original. The duo describe their meeting in unromantic terms.“ We met at the digital-artgallery, decided to make an installation together, and never separated ever since,” they recal ..read more

Behind the scenes of Mosse’s latest film, now showing at 180 Studios. Richard Mosse’s Broken Spectre uses a range of scientific imaging technologies to capture environmental crimes in the remotest parts of the Brazilian Amazon. Created in collaboration with artist and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten and composer Ben Frost, the film, now installed at London’s 180 Studios, is the result of three years of painstaking documentation, using satellite imagery and extreme close-up techniques to capture macro and micro perspectives of a man-made environmental disaster. Art21’s new documentary, What The ..read more

The American artist on her debut feature The African Desperate and creating work where humour and pain connect. Martine Syms works across film, video, programming, photography, sculpture, performance, and writing. Her skills run deep and wide. She retains artistic control over every aspect of the projects she undertakes, from cinematography to editing and graphic design, seeing it through from beginning to end. For the LA-born artist, the interaction of Blackness with technology is a fruitful place from which to explore the ways that power functions and behavioural social conditioning takes sh ..read more

The Houston native on DJ Screw, his city’s musical legacy and What Dreams May Come, his most ambitious project to date. Houston sounds like no place on earth, but these days everything sounds like Houston. From H-town’s finest – Megan Thee Stallion, Beyonce, Solange, Travis Scott – cloud rap prodigy Yung Lean and witch house pioneers Salem, the loose bounce and languid pace of the Southern sound has crept slowly but surely into the sonic textures of our everyday. Though broad in its reach and spanning over two decades in evolution, within its essence is the revolutionary sound of DJ Screw. It ..read more

How the British digital art collective create generative work that evolves with time and human interaction. Let’s start with depicting the human soul. British media art and design collective Universal Everything (UE) create diverse projects that aim to do just that. From buildings covered in giant digital animations to 3D-printed sculptural characters, AI-generated futurist fashion shows to interactive digital mirrors, UE’s projects are connected by a desire to explore how to depict and create emotion. Matt Pyke established the collaborative studio in 2004, initially working on graphic design ..read more

The dance artist and choreographer on the intense process and personal experiences that went into creating the award-winning Traplord. ‘Dance is the way I communicate’, says Ivan Michael Blackstock. ‘I’ve never thought of it as something separate from me’, a truth that makes itself clearly felt over the course of an hour’s conversation with the 36-year-old choreographer and dance artist, whose award-winning show Traplord was commissioned by and premiered at 180 Studios. Though the setup of our chat is conventional – we sat across from one another on office chairs – the words he speaks convey b ..read more

LA-based studio Actual Objects on how they suspended reality in their collaboration with electronic musician VTSS. In the opening scene for VTSS’s Notoriously Fast music video, a lone motorcyclist speeds around a bend on the edge of a dark forest. As night falls, the rider blends in with the looming sky above and the asphalt that lines the road below. The unknown biker journeys on, blazing through a green-lit vortex-like underground tunnel that blurs into the background as the biker gains speed, clearly impatient to reach their destination. Suddenly the video cuts to a flash of scene ..read more