In Making of The Zizi Show, Jake talks about the ideas, themes, and technology behind The Zizi Project.
ANIMATE X QUAD: identity
Jessica Ashman / Jake Elwes + Me the Drag Queen / Nina Thomas
A pop up exhibition at QUAD, Derby, featuring work by Jessica Ashman, Jake Elwes and Me the Drag Queen, and Nina Thomas.
Whilst the artists make work that is distinct in subject, style and approach, they have in common an interest in the personal and political ways in which marginalised lives can be affected by, othered, and be responsive to, the world in which we live. Their work explores, respectively: Black, deaf, and Queer histories and lived experience – questioning and challenging misconceptions, reclaiming discriminatory histories and revealing bias – but which is ultimately proud, celebratory and hopeful.
QUAD is Derby’s Cultural Hub providing contemporary art exhibitions, film, cinema, integrated digital media work and a range of educational and creative activities that is inspirational, innovative and inclusive.
Jessica Ashman
Works in exhibition:
DAWTA, 7 mins, 2021
Hold Tight, 1 min, 2018
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Spirit Sigh presents DAWTA, 22 mins, 2021
DAWTA tells the story of a young Black woman, running away from a pivotal moment in her family history. Guided by two elders, she discovers a safe, future utopian planet for Black women through a mysterious superpower. Inspired by Black science fiction author Octavia Butler, and by Jessica’s own family history of migration and trans-racial fostering, DAWTA combines experimental animation techniques and live musical performance to create a sci-fi narrative of interdimensional time travel, questioning the possibilities of imagining better futures for the Black diaspora.
Produced by Abigail Addison at Animate Projects, and supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Hold Tight explores the importance of Carnival across the UK and how its celebrations provide an important connection to heritage and identity for younger generations of the Black Caribbean diaspora in Britain. It is a journey into the feeling of belonging, through the rituals of Carnival attendance and the power of bass.
Commissioned by Animate and Anim18, with support from Arts Council England and the BFI, and presented in the QUAD/V21 Artspace virtual gallery.
Spirit Sigh presents DAWTA documents a live animation performance, with Jessica aka Spirit Sigh playing guitar and loops, plus drums from artist Bimpe Alliu.
Jessica’s work focuses on creating experimental animated narratives that explore gender, identity and race, drawing on the wider stories of the Black British diaspora communities she was raised in, especially the histories and oral testimonies that have been lost or hidden in these communities.
Jessica studied animation at the University of Lincoln and has an MA in Animation from the Royal College of Art. She now lives and works in London.
Screenings and exhibition include Tate Modern, London Short Film Festival, Encounters Film Festival, BlackStar Film Festival (Philadelphia), Flatpack Festival (Birmingham), Cardiff International Animation Festival (Cardiff), Women’s Film Festival (Brooklyn, New York, Underwire Film Festival (London).
She is a BAFTA Scotland award winning animator (2011) and was nominated for an Arts Foundation Futures Awards for Experimental Short Animation (2020). Jessica releases music under the moniker of Spirit Sigh and was formerly in punk R&B band Secret Power, having played Decolonise Fest, Supernormal as well as supporting Big Joanie on their 2019 UK tour.
Jake Elwes
+ Me the Drag Queen
Works in exhibition:
Welcome to The Zizi Show, 2 mins, 2020
The Zizi Show – I Am What I Am, 3 mins, 2020
Zizi & Me – Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), 5 mins, 2020
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Making of The Zizi Show, 6 min, 2021
The Zizi Project (2019 – ongoing) is an ongoing collaboration between Jake and Me the Drag Queen. The collection of works explores the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and drag performance. Facial recognition algorithms (and deepfake technology) have difficulty recognising trans, queer and other marginalised identities: the Zizi Project, through cabaret and musical theatre, challenges narratives surrounding A.I. and society, exposing how, whilst Drag challenges gender and explores otherness, A.I. – often mystified as a concept and tool – is complicit in reproducing social bias.
Jake’s work explores the aesthetics and ethics inherent to AI – searching for poetry and narrative in the success and failures of AI systems, making use of the sophistication of machine learning, while finding illuminating qualities in its limitations, across projects that encompass moving-image installation, sound and performance. Whilst it may seem like the AI is a creative collaborator, Jake is careful to point out that the AI has neither intentionality or agency; it is a neutral agent existing within a human framework.
Jake studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, and lives and works in London. Their work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Somerset House, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Ars Electronica, Austria; Science Gallery Dublin; Onassis Foundation, Athens; Arebyte Gallery, London; Nature Morte, Delhi, India; and Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UK.
Nina Thomas
Works in exhibition:
PLACE SETTING, 13 mins, 2024
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PLACE SETTING interviews, 30 mins, 2023
PLACE SETTING refers to a set of tableware for dining, and also resonates with how lives are shaped by a particular culture, industry and workers. Nina’s new film explores themes of loss, memory and community, and what it is to live in and work in a hearing world, in the context of the ceramics industry in The Potteries. Nina researched local archives in Stoke-on-Trent, and met with deaf former ceramic industry workers; interviews with ex-Potteries workers, Malcolm Johnson and Anne Cartlidge, are shown alongside the film.
Commissioned by Animate and British Ceramics Biennial. Shown at the British Ceramics Biennial in 2023, and touring to LUX, London, in April 2024. The project was supported by Deaflinks, The Willows School, Spode Museum Trust, and Stoke-on-Trent City Archives. Supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
Nina works predominantly with film and installation, exploring overlooked or under-explored stories and histories. Recent work has focused on her experience of becoming deaf and subsequently seeking to understand other deaf experiences and histories. Exhibitions include The Crypt Gallery, London and OVADA, Oxford.
She grew up in Staffordshire, and now lives in London. She studied illustration at the University of Derby and has MA in Art and Media Practice from the University of Westminster.
Nina is profoundly deaf, and as a founding member of The Film Bunch, a deaf and hard of hearing film organisation, she has curated the online screening Deaf Experience and was commissioned by Pan Macmillan to create an animation for poet Raymond Antrobus. Her film Silence was commissioned and exhibited by LUX, London in 2020. She has worked on access and advisory projects at the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Wallace Collection, National Disability Art Collection and Archive, The British Museum, Shape Arts and the D4D research programme. Nina is a trustee at Stagetext.
