The Process Archive: Experimenting with Sound and the Voice

For the first in The Process Archive sub-series we revisit three works from Assembly, Somerset House Studios experimental sound and music series, with artists Elaine Mitchener, Beatrice Dillon, Jennifer Walshe and Memo Akten.Originating in 2018, Assembly emerged from the roots of sonic art and sound-based practice within the Studios resident artist community. To mark its fifth edition, we look back at some of the works that have defined it.

Somerset House Studios artist Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom reimagines the drums as a time-travelling device across continent, history, and bodies.A visual artist who has been learning the drums as part of an art project since 2020, Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom has long been interested in how we might reframe our perception of the drums. Its primal release of sound and movement. An ability to shape and reshape our sense of time. But what happens if we take it one step further and reimagine the drum kit as a time-travelling device?In this episode of The Process, Boakye-Yiadom explores the often-invisible histories of the drum, from being othered and dismissed as noise, rather than music, to sounding the resistance against colonial power. Why is it that drummers like Clyde Stubblefield – the most sampled drummer of all time – are often neglected in music history? And who decides what is visible?To unpack these questions, Boakye-Yiadom speaks to British Italian multi-genre drummer, percussionist and composer, Valentina Magaletti, and writer and musicologist, Matt Brennan, author of A Social History of the Drum Kit.Boakye-Yiadom works across a multi-disciplinary practice, creating installations where the mediums are ever-evolving, and constantly in conversation with each other.He joined the Studios community in 2023, as the inaugural recipient of the Donna Lynas Residency, supported by Modern Art Oxford, Somerset House Studios, South London Gallery and Wysing Arts Centre, receiving a salary for three years and the support of each partner, including mentoring, use of facilities and inclusion in public programmes. -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.

Artist duo Cooking Sections blur the lines between art and activism with their installation, The Ministry of Sewers. The Ministry of Sewers is an exhibit by artist duo Cooking Sections for the Folkestone Triennial. Inspired by the 1976 appointment of Dennis Howell as Minister for Drought  – then Minister for Floods and Snows – it invites audiences to reimagine an alternative public service, using the voices of local communities to mobilise action against the scale of water pollution in the UK and reclaim the coastlines. From raw sewage spills to stream contamination and agrochemicals, The Ministry of Sewers amplifies the voices of swimmers, schoolchildren, farmers and scientists alike, all the while demanding change in shaping an alternative future of clean, swimmable seas all year. In this episode of The Process, Cooking Sections’ Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe explore the blurry boundaries between fact and fiction in artmaking: how might art and activism intersect, and can performance be a tool for direct change? They hear from Paula Serafini, Senior Lecturer in Creative and Cultural Industries at Queen Mary, University of London, and Liv Pennington and Michele Shonfield, two of the ministers involved in the installation, on how art can empower people to speak out on issues that affect them. Credits Contributors: Cooking Sections - Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe; Paula Serafini, Patricia Rolfe, Michele Shonfeld, and Liv Pennington  Executive Producer: Eleanor Ritter-Scott  Producer: Arlie Adlington  Host: Laurent John Theme Music: Ka Baird  Sound Engineer: Mike WoolleyThe 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. 

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.  

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.

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.

Our Future is tied to the future of our soil. Our decisions as to how we care for and use it matter. Soil teaches us that cycles are ongoing, and even in decline every day offers us opportunities for new beginnings. In this final episode Shenece Oretha explores the regenerative qualities of soil and composting as a model for personal redemption.  We hear from Palestinian grower Mohammed Saleh whose life story offers a personal story of hope, looking at how permaculture and art can help to heal the destructive impacts of war. Somerset Studios artist Harun Morrision’s singing compost invites us to see decay in a new light and Fin Jordâo lays out how composting can be a radical action for rethinking our relationships with each other and the planet. Does the future hold a closer, more natural relationship with the soil by rethinking our relationship to burial? Radical undertaker Ru Callander reconsiders our attitude to death.The series launches off from the Somerset House exhibition SOIL: The World at Our Feet.Presented by Shenece OrethaProduced by Jo Barratt and Alannah Chance Exec produced by Alannah Chance and Eleanor Ritter-Scott. The series is mixed by Mike WoolleyOriginal music by Andrew Pekler.

Much of the history of human making springs from the soil. Cuneiform, the earliest form of writing, was engraved into clay; paint pigments come from minerals in the soil; and much of our material history is held in ceramics. But soil is not neutral; it is deeply entangled with politics of ownership embedded in the land. In this episode Shenece Oretha probes the ways the soil and clay are inspiring artists today, looking at the stories soil can tell about our past and our potential future. Ceramicist and writer Jennifer Lucy Allan reflects on the ways clay connects us to the earliest forms of making. Artists Annalee Davis and Lauren Gault look at the ways soil bears witness to our histories, from the trauma of the plantation to the deep time of paleontology. We create art from soil, but through our extraction and interaction, it is also changed. How can we heal our relationship with the soil and in so doing, transform our relationship with the planet? Farmer and food justice advocate Leah Penniman unpacks how indigenous practices of soil care can reverse some of the most egregious effects of climate change.  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.

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.

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?   Across three episodes, presenter and Somerset House Studios artist Shenece Oretha traces the life cycle of soil, from it’s foundational role at the beginning of life with artist Asad Raza, through to its manifestation as one of the earliest creative materials, with ceramist and writer Jennifer Lucy Allan. We hear from artists Annalee Davis and Lauren Gault on the ways soil bears witness our difficult histories, before exploring decay and the regenerative powers of soil in our final episode, with the work of artist Mohamed Salah and radical undertaker Rupert Callender.  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.