REFUSAL: A Participatory Gathering at Lakeside Theatre

Posted on: November 25, 2025

On Wednesday, 26 November, from 6–8 PM, the Lakeside Theatre at the University of Essex will host REFUSAL, an experimental, one-night-only participatory event bringing together an eclectic group of artists, sound practitioners, filmmakers, and researchers. The evening explores fragmentation, glitch, and disruption as creative strategies—an invitation to step outside normative regimes of spectacle and into a space of exploratory, collective encounter.

Working across sound, moving image, sculpture, performance, animation, and computational experimentation, the participating artists each offer a unique approach to storytelling and media. While their practices vary widely, they are united by a shared commitment to openness, curiosity, and refusal of fixed narratives. Following the performances, attendees are warmly invited to join an informal discussion—an opportunity to reflect on the relationships between media, consciousness, materiality, and the unknown.

Featured Artists

The programme includes contributions from:

• Elena Botts
  Artist and researcher at Essex whose work interweaves glitch, sound-field recording, and site-disarticulation to propose “networked sonic rupture” as a gesture toward other worlds.

• E.G. King
  Creator of semi-improvised sound and movement collages using analogue and digital tools to explore mindful creativity.

• Pat Nininger
  Composer of harmonic and noise-based sound ecologies that dismantle linear listening through rupture and saturation.

• Hadiyan Yusuf Kuntoro
  Yogyakarta-based experimenter and researcher whose interdisciplinary practice bridges scientific inquiry, design, and fine art.

• aly,willamina cutler-gear
  Artist working between statistical linguistics, computation, and composition, here performing with homemade software reanimating dormant Norn lifeworlds.

• Rachel Garfield
  Professor of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, known for video works exploring lived relationships and shifting subjectivities.

• Lu : Lucille : hebe Brownrigg
  A warm-blooded mammal working with voice, breath, and biological resonance, exploring contamination, melody, and microbial possession.

• Yun Lu
  Animation researcher investigating technical failure, nonlinear temporality, and beyond-human animation

The evening will consist of a sequence of short performances and screenings, including video works, sound performances, talks, and hybrid forms. Each piece offers its own mode of epistemic humility—inviting viewers to inhabit uncertainty, complexity, and the refusal of closure.

More information and tickets here – https://lakesidetheatre.org.uk/events/refusal/

Lakeside Theatre
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Square 5
Colchester
CO4 3SQ

Author: Emily Smith
Posted: 25/11/2025
Categories: Events, News