Somerset House Podcast

For the last decade, Somerset House Studios has been home to work which has explored and challenged the boundaries of emerging technology. As it approaches its tenth anniversary, director Marie McPartlin revisits a landmark collaboration from 1966 and explores how it resonates today. 
‘9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering ‘brought leading artists together with engineers from Bell Labs for a series of performances in New York in 1966, pioneering new ways of working with technology and inspiring the formation of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). 
60 years later, Somerset House Studios reimagined the format with ‘3 Evenings’, a series of performances at Wapping Power Station, inviting artists to experiment with evolving technologies. In this episode of The Process, Marie McPartlin discusses the spirit behind 9 Evenings with E.A.T director Julie Martin and asks artists from this year’s programme what it means to perform with technology today.  Together they consider whether true experimentation requires some failure and whether allowing machines to break onstage can be an act of subversion.

To mark Somerset House Studios’ 10th birthday month, we revisit an archive episode of the Studios podcast, which featured audio works and one-off series from the artistic community here. 

This episode from 2019 was presented by The Feminist Internet, a group of artists and designers working to build an equal and just internet for all. In this first episode of their series, they explore the consequences of having female gendered voice assistants encoded into our digital space. Is a feminist Alexa is possible? What would that sound like?

At the heart of the creative community at Somerset House is Somerset House Studios, where up to 70 artists are resident at any one time. Deep in the vaults of the building, movement artists share space with set designers and film makers work alongside musicians. Conversations which begin around a desk can go on to form long collaborations. 
What subjects drive these conversations? Over a game of snooker, we hear two artists from the Studios talk about an idea that is occupying them. We follow as they share their innermost thoughts on the subject, from what it means to be an artist within the current technological landscape to how class, power and ideology intersect within the art world, all from the safety of the Somerset House snooker room.
In this episode, artists Jemma Desai and John Costi discuss Dom Hunter’s Chav Solidarity, a book of essays which examines the ways in which our classed experiences shape the ways in which we think and do politics.  They share the moment they decided to become an artist, the compulsion to make work and who gets to be an artist in the first place.

The Process: Archive invites artists from our cultural programme and artist community to reflect on different works from the sonic archives and podcasts of Somerset House – from talks to soundscapes, performance to composition.
In this episode, we deep dive into the transformative power of cute, exploring what happens when shrines and pop devotion intersect with the irresistible force of cuteness.
Dot Alma is an artist from Greater Manchester, and is known for a touring shrine dedicated to George Michael, which is featured as part of the Holy Pop! Exhibition exploring how we idolise pop stars, cult icons, and even fictional characters have become a modern form of devotion.
The former Wham! singer who died on Christmas Day in 2016. For Dot, this devotion deepened rather than faded after his death, taking on a spiritual quality that helps them explore identity and connection. Having navigated uncertain teenage years before finding peace with their identity in their twenties, Dot now lives a life of queer freedom and sees George Michael, revered by many as a queer folk-saint figure, as a model of positive queer masculinity.
Dot shares what excites them about the world-building potential of pop culture, as we revisit the 2024 Process episode, Felt Cute, Might Shapeshift Later, with artist and musician Hannah Diamond.
Contributors: Dot Alma; Hannah Diamond  
Executive Producer: Eleanor Ritter-Scott 
Producer: Tess Davidson  
Host: Laurent John 
Theme Music: Ka Baird  
Additional Sound: Dot Alma

From alternative modes of listening to live performance as a form of time travel, the Black political economy of music and the platform conditions of distribution, musician, curator and theorist, DeForrest Brown Jr. wants to discover new ways of relating to audio. In a world of noise and an oversaturated music industry, what new worlds might we discover if we reimagine how we make and listen to music?  
In this sonic essay for The Process, DeForrest reveals some of the ideas generated from his one-month residency at Somerset House Studios in 2025. Drawing on his research project, Rhythmanalytics, where he explores electronic music at the end of the music industry, DeForrest gives insight into his multi-media project, Synoptic Audio.   
In a richly textured dialogue between sound and words, DeForrest shares his experience of returning to Somerset House Studios to perform live as part of Assembly 2026 programme.  
Credits:
Contributors: DeForrest Brown Jr  
Executive Producer: Eleanor Ritter-Scott 
Producer: Tess Davidson  
Sound Engineer: Mike Woolley 
Host: Laurent John 
Theme Music: Ka Baird  
Additional sound: DeForrest Brown Jr (live recording, Assembly, Somerset House Studios, 2026)