## **Programme Overview** In 2025, with the support of the **Cockayne Foundation, Fluxus Art Projects, Phileus, Foyle Foundation. The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, The Austrian Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, Henry Moore Foundation, Art Fund and Elephant Trust** Cell Project Space delivered a critically engaged programme of exhibitions and research, combining international solo presentations, long-term historical inquiry, and structured public engagement. Across the year, Cell supported artists at pivotal stages, facilitated meaningful encounters between artists, curators, and writers, and extended its work beyond the gallery through research, pedagogy, and public programming. **Untamed Assemblies (Research-Led Public Programme)** _Untamed Assemblies_ launched a major research initiative examining under-researched histories of experimental fashion and contemporary art in Eastern Europe during the 1990s, with particular attention to UK cultural exchange. Focusing on the Untamed Fashion Assemblies in Riga and the Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies in Tbilisi, the project explored how informal, collaborative, and performative modes of production emerged during a period of geopolitical transition. Throughout 2025, the programme established its research foundations through interviews with original organisers, archival recovery and digitisation (VHS footage, press cuttings, photographs), and mapping of transnational networks in collaboration with the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art. This consolidated fragmented histories into a coherent account. The public launch in March 2025 filled Cell Project Space to capacity, attracting professionals from contemporary art, fashion, and academia, including **Pierre Bal-Blanc, Julia Gardener, Solvita Krese (Director, LCCA Riga), Sylvia Kouvali (Rodeo Gallery)** , and researchers from the **Courtauld Institute and London College of Fashion** . The launch featured screenings, archival presentations, and a panel discussion with **Bruno Birmanis, Phyllis Cohen** , and **Guus Beumer** . Total audience across the first events reached 116. A key outcome of Untamed Assemblies is its continuation into the **19th Venice Biennale** , where _Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia_ will form the **Latvian Pavilion in 2026** . The programme reached an estimated 150,000 users onlineand reinforced Cell’s role as a platform for long-term, research-driven inquiry into overlooked artistic histories. ## **Majd Abdel Hamid: Daydreamers** _Daydreamers_ was the first London solo exhibition of Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid, curated by Adomas Narkevičius (March–May 2025). The exhibition brought together long-term embroidery works and new commissions exploring slowness, labour, memory, and resistance, positioning textile practice as both method and metaphor for living and thinking beyond binary logics. The exhibition welcomed over 900 visitors and attracted curators, writers, and artists including **Claude Adjil (Serpentine), Helena Reckitt, Tamara Chalabi, Angelina Radakovic (Mosaic Rooms), Ted Targett (Brunette Coleman)** , and artists such as **Mona Hatoum, Paul Noble, Georgina Starr,** and **Coumba Samba** . A visit from **Kunsthalle Basel** highlighted the exhibition’s international significance. `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **Public engagement** included The Looms Workshop with **Blackhorse Activators,** led by Trainee Producers **supported by Art Fund** Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart. Participants aged 15–25 responded to the exhibition through embroidery and needlework, reflecting on time, slowness, and imaginative resistance. This translated Abdel Hamid’s methodology into a participatory, reflective practice. A poignant highlight was the exhibition finissage with **Paul Noble** , presenting dot to dot (2006), his three-part sound poem originally voiced by **Laetitia Sadier.** Introduced by Noble through reflections on his first encounter with Hamid in Ramallah (2007), the event traced a poetic, intergenerational connection. Visitors were invited to take home over 600 sculptural elements from _Daydreamers_ (Fortune Tellers), allowing the exhibition to continue through distributed afterlives. _Daydreamers_ received notable editorial coverage, including a review feature in **Canvas Magazine and Mousse Magazine** and a listing in Art Monthly, and reached an estimated 150,000 online users, positioning Abdel Hamid’s practice within UK and international discourse. ## **Tanja Widmann & Johannes Porsch: Produced by –1, plus One** This exhibition marked the first UK solo presentation of Austrian artist Tanja Widmann, in collaboration with Johannes Porsch. Staged across Cell Project Space, including office infrastructure, the exhibition treated the gallery as a conceptual machine where subjectivity, authorship, and institutional power were continuously produced through feedback, delay, and repetition. Over ten weeks, it welcomed 437 visitors and drew attention from curators and writers including **Alvin Li, Fiontan Moran, Dina Akhmadeeva (Tate Modern), Olivia Aherne (Chisenhale), Bianca Stoppani (Fondazione Between Art & Film), Alexander Leissle (ArtReview), Chris McCormack (Art Monthly), and Rahma Khazam** , alongside artists including **Merlin Carpenter, John Smith,** and **Jasper Marsalis** . The exhibition was extended through the workshop **A Slow Roasted Subject, And A Lengthy Buffet,** led by Goldsmiths alumni Frank Wates and Oli Mardon, with Trainee Producers Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart. Working with the **Goldsmiths Art Writing Group** , participants explored collective writing, repetition, and variation inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style. Resulting texts were installed throughout the gallery, creating a live feedback loop between artwork, writing, and audience. Open for ten weeks, the exhibition welcomed 1,027 visitors and attracted professional attention from **Nicole Yip (Spike Island), Amy Budd (MOMA Oxford), Alvin Li and Katrina Nzegwu (Tate Modern), Julia Gardener (Hot Wheels), and Ted Targett (Brunette Coleman)** alongside internationally active artists, **Gray Wielebinski, Michelle Williams Gamaker, Jack O’Brien, Michel Ho, and Nicole Cosen** _Fortunate_ received strong editorial coverage, including an online review on e-flux, listings in Artforum and Art Monthly, selection for **London Oomph during Frieze Week, and a full feature in Flash Art Magazine (Winter 2025) by Olivia Aherne, Curator Chisenhale Gallery** , resulting directly from professional engagement during the exhibition. Estimated digital reach was 150,000 users. Public programming included curator- and artist-led tours and an in-depth conversation between Mou and curator/writer Giulia Civardi, exploring migration, classification, cross-cultural encounters, and the influence of Renaissance painting, ornamentation, and alchemical thinking on Mou’s practice. ## **Overall Impact** In 2025, Cell Project Space welcomed over 3,400 in-person visitors, engaged hundreds of curators, writers, artists, students, and youth, and achieved extensive visibility through press, magazines, and online platforms. With invaluable support from our partners, the programme strengthened artists’ UK and international profiles, facilitated long-term research, and reaffirmed Cell as a platform for experimental, research-led contemporary art, linking exhibitions, workshops, and public dialogue into a cohesive and critically significant year-long programme. The exhibition reached an estimated 150,000 online users through ArtReview, e-flux, and social media, consolidating Widmann’s presence in the UK context and demonstrating Cell’s commitment to reflective, institutionally aware practice. ## **Ruoru Mou: Fortunate** _Fortunate_ presented entirely new works by Ruoru Mou, produced through complex automated kinetic systems, with elements created in the UK and shipped from Amsterdam. The project highlighted Cell’s expanded production capacity and its support for artists working at the intersection of material experimentation and international collaboration. ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` ## Page Contents 1. 7. 20. 36. Untamed Assemblies/ Event _Daydreamers_ , Majd Abdel Hamid, Solo Exhibition - _–1, plus One, Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by_ , Exhibition _Fortunate_ , Ruoru Mou, Solo Exhibition `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **1** ## Exhibition Report ## Untamed Assemblies 1 Screening and Panel Discussion ## Contents: Press Release Exhibition Documentation Exhibition Report Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road 6. Audience Public Programme Press Coverage London E2 9DA Contact: info@cellprojects.org Cell Project Space (London, UK) supported by the Cockayne Foundation, with additional support from the Foyle Foundation. Curator Adomas Narkevičius ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **2** ``` Press Release ``` ## **`Untamed Assemblies 1`** ## `Screening and Panel Discussion` ## `6.30pm Thursday 13th March` ``` Discussion, Screening and Archival Materials ``` Join us on Thursday, 13th March, at 6.30pm for the launch of _Untamed Assemblies_ , a new research and public programme at Cell Project Space, exploring the under-recognised intersections between experimental fashion and visual art in the 1990s, with a focus on cultural exchanges between the UK and ‘Eastern’ Europe. This inaugural event will bring together the initiator of _Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA)_ , Bruno Birmanis, alongside original participants Phyllis Cohen and Guus Beumer. _UFA_ was an annual carnivalesque festival that took place in Riga, Latvia, between 1990 and 1999, fusing alternative fashion, drag, and visual art. The evening will feature a screening, a panel discussion moderated by Cell’s Curator Adomas Narkevičius, and a presentation of archival materials, offering insights into the _Assemblies’_ spirit, their reception in both UK and Latvian media, and their broader cultural impact. Fashion designer Bruno Birmanis will be joined by Guus Beumer, Founding Director (2013–2021) of Het Nieuwe Instituut and Temporary Fashion Museum (2015–2016), Rotterdam, and Phyllis Cohen, experimental make-up artist, illustrator, and Founder of Face Lace, London. Together, they will revisit the atmosphere and legacy of the Assemblies, reflecting on their non-commercial ethos and the intersections of experimental fashion, visual art, drag performance, anti-Soviet sentiment, and partying – erupting during rather than after the events’ themselves. _Untamed Assemblies_ continues Cell’s engagement with experimental artistic and cultural practices - emerging from ‘Eastern’ Europe, following the Queer Anti Colonial Solidarity Fundraiser Performance Night (2023) and CEED Feminisms programmes (2023–24). It also reflects on a moment of sociopolitical transition in the early 1990s, shaped by both euphoria and economic collapse in newly independent, decolonised countries such as Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia. Against this backdrop, the _Untamed Fashion Assemblies_ in Riga and, slightly later, the _Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies_ in Tbilisi, emerged as singular interdisciplinary festivals incorporating alternative fashion, visual art, club culture, politics, and drag. For a brief moment in the 1990s, radical young fashion in the region captured the international imagination – particularly that of the United Kingdom. Iconic sculptor and jeweller Andrew Logan brought his performances to Riga and Tbilisi, accompanied by BBC film crews. Designers Zandra Rhodes and Red or Dead’s Wayne Hemingway were among other notable participants, and in 1994, Paco Rabanne served as a jury member for the competition. A list of Central Saint Martins students in attendance suggests that Alexander McQueen may have witnessed the Assemblies firsthand. Pioneering feminist artist Eglė Rakauskaitė, who represented Lithuania at the 1999 Venice Biennale, presented wearable objects, while curator Raimundas Malašauskas, whose poetic, ephemeral methods informed what is now known as New Institutionalism, modelled for designer Sandra Straukaitė at Vilnius’ UFA-inspired _Fashion Infection_ . Meanwhile, in Georgia, the _Assemblies_ helped shape the ethos and aesthetics of ‘anti-fashion’ – most recently brought to the global stage by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, artistic director of Balenciaga. The story of _Untamed Fashion Assemblies_ – its impact on contemporary art, social change, and queer discourse in the region, as well as its latent influence on non-commercial and experimental fashion internationally – has yet to be fully explored. ## **Call for Archival Materials** _Untamed Assemblies 1_ also marks the start of year-long research into the _Untamed Fashion Assemblies_ (Riga), _Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies_ (Tbilisi), and broader cultural exchanges between ‘Eastern’ Europe and the United Kingdom at the intersection of art and fashion in the 1990s. If you participated in or contributed to these events, or hold archival material, please do not hesitate to get in touch: info [at] cellprojects [dot] org. _Bruno Birmanis is a designer whose work spans alternative fashion, wearable art, environmental and interior design. He is the founder and organiser of the experimental festival Untamed Fashion Assemblies (1990-1999) and has held the position of director for Vilnius Fashion Week and Moscow Fashion Week. Birmanis has also contributed to notable exhibitions and events such as ‘We Don’t Do This’, MO Museum, Vilnius; ’13 Women I (Still) Haven’t Married’, Latvian National Museum of Art, Rīga; ‘Ballet. Beyond.’, Putti Gallery and Riga Central Station, Riga. Additionally, he co-created ‘The Post-Banalism Ball’ in 1988, the first alternative fashion performance in the former USSR._ _Guus Beumer was the Founding Director of Het Nieuwe Instituut (2013–2021) in Rotterdam, where he established the Temporary Fashion Museum (2015–2016). Previously, he directed Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture, and Bureau Europa in Maastricht. He also led the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI). In the 1990s, Beumer worked in fashion with Alexander van Slobbe, co-developing the brands Orson + Bodil and SO. He was a founding member of De Zaak Nu, supporting art presentation institutions. He curated the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale (2011) and was Commissioner of the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2014). A regular contributor to Metropolis M, he recently founded Bruin, an initiative on waste wool._ _Phyllis Cohen is a makeup artist, illustrator, and the founder of Face Lace. Her career spans several decades, during which she has collaborated with numerous iconic figures. Throughout the 1980s, she worked with renowned artists such as David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Tina Turner, and Janet Jackson. Her work appeared in prestigious publications like Vogue, Elle, and Vanity Fair. Her notable trompe-l’œil (optical illusion) makeup looks, producing three-dimensional effects on the skin, solidified her status as a pioneer in experimental makeup artistry._ ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **3** ## **`Untamed Assemblies 1: Documentation`** Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 ## **`Untamed Assemblies 1: Launch`** `Screening and Thursday, 13th March 2025 Panel Discussion 6.30-8.30pm` `Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road London E2 9DA +44(0)208 9816336 info@cellprojects.org cellprojects.org` Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 A2 Poster- Gallery Entrance & e-newsletter `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **4** Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivates)_ , 2025, Ø 2.4 x 1.5 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **5** ## **`Event Report`** Untamed Assemblies is a research-led public programme initiated at Cell Project Space in 2025. It focuses on the under-researched histories of artistic production at the intersection of alternative fashion and contemporary art in ‘Eastern’ Europe during the 1990s, with particular attention to cultural exchange with the UK. This stage of the project focused on the 1990s Untamed Fashion Assemblies (UFA), Riga, and the Avantgarde Fashion Assemblies, Tbilisi. For a brief moment in the 1990s, radical young fashion in the region captured the international imagination, particularly that of the UK. Sculpturo and jeweller Andrew Logan brought his performances to Riga and Tbilisi, accompanied by BBC film crews. Designers Zandra Rhodes and Red or Dead’s Wayne Hemingway were among participants, and in 1994, Paco Rabanne served as a jury member for the competition. A list of CSM students suggests that Alexander McQueen was among those in attendance. Pioneering feminist artist Eglė Rakauskaitė, who represented Lithuania at the 1999 Venice Biennale, presented wearable objects, while curator Raimundas Malašauskas, whose poetic, ephemeral methods informed what is now known as New Institutionalism, modelled for designer Sandra Straukaitė at Vilnius’ UFA-inspired Fashion Infection. Meanwhile, in Georgia, the Assemblies helped shape the ethos and aesthetics of ‘anti-fashion’ – most recently brought to the global stage by Georgian designer Demna Gvasalia, artistic director of Balenciaga. Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 In 2025, the project focused on establishing the core tenets of research: conducting interviews with original participants and organisers, mapping transnational networks of correspondence and collaboration, gathering existing written and visual material, and identifying the extent of UK-based involvement. In collaboration with Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, we began compiling archival fragments, sketches, press cuttings, photographs, digitising VHS footage, and reconstructing participant lists to begin assembling a coherent historical account The project builds on Cell’s ongoing engaging variously under-acknowledged - diasporic, decolonial, queer - or otherwise unbefitting artistic histories. It continues a line of inquiry developed through the CEED Feminisms public programme and recent work with artists and collectives working across performance, memory, and anti-colonial frameworks. Untamed Assemblies is interested in the ephemeral and informal conditions under which these scenes operated, and asks how their forms of production, rooted in instability, collaboration, and refusal might inform curatorial work today. In March 2025, the first public event was held at Cell Project Space. It featured a screening and panel discussion with key contributors to the Assemblies: Bruno Birmanis (founder of the Riga Assemblies), Phyllis Cohen (makeup artist and original participant), and Guus Beumer (founding director of Het Nieuwe Instituut). The programme also included the presentation of archival materials, some previously not shown publicly, including BBC and Latvian television footage. Untamed Assemblies 1, Event Documentation, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **6** The research and programme initiated at Cell has contributed to next year’s 19th Venice Biennale, where curator Adomas Narkevičius will co-curate the Latvian Pavilion under the title Untamed Assembly: Backstage of Utopia. The Pavilion will expand the project through newly commisioned performances and never before exhibited objects and printed matter. Untamed Assemblies contributes to a better understanding of how experimental fashion and visual art operated as tools of expression, and exchange during a moment of geopolitical upheaval. It also reinforces Cell’s role as a platform for long-term, process-based research into histories that remain at the edges of dominant institutional narratives. **Continuing this research and regional focus Adomas Narkevičius stepped down from his role as curator at Cell Project Space in September 2025 into an exciting new role as Founding Director of Upė Foundation, a new London-based initiative dedicated to fostering exchange and knowledge-sharing between Baltic and international curatorial and discursive fields in contemporary art.** ## **`Audience`** The launch event in the ‘Untamed Assemblies’ public programme opened on 13 March 2025 with a full-house evening at Cell Project Space, welcoming approximately 100 visitors. The event attracted a wide range of professionals from the contemporary art and fashion communities, including Julia Gardener (Founder, Hot Wheels, London & Athens), Ana Viktoria Dzinic (Artist), Pierre Bal-Blanc (Curator), Solvita Krese (Director, LCCA Riga), Maria Mileeva (Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Art, Courtauld), Janina Pedan (Artist), Meera Sleight (Head of Textiles/Design, Martine Rose), Anne Reimers (Senior Lecturer, Cultural and Historical Studies, LCF), Caroline Stevenson (Programme Director, Cultural and Historical Studies, LCF), Sylvia Kouvali (Gallerist, Rodeo), Lore Alender (Editor, Emergent Magazine), Ewa Poniatowska (Rat Section), and Chris O’Carroll (Design Studio Manager, Martine Rose). Visitor numbers across the following three public days brought the total audience to 116. Plaster Magazine- Preview Exhibitions not to be missed This was the first in a two-part programme revisitis the legacy and afterlives of the Untamed Fashion Assemblies. A second contribution has been extended to the19th Venice Biennale in 2026 for the Latvian Pavilion continuing to build the project’s critical and public reach through expanded dialogue across visual art, fashion, and performance. ## **Press & Digital Reach** Online, the project reached an extended audience of approximately 150,000 users, through targeted advertising, Cell’s website, social media platforms (Instagram: 15,400 followers; Facebook and X/ Twitter), and Cell’s monthly newsletter (8,000 subscribers). The exhibition generated engagement via shared content, artist reposts, and newsletter, extending its visibility across UK and international audiences.The project launched an important profile for Bruno Birmanis and has built and international momentum and platform for the Latvian Pavilion. Recording of the Event: Panel Discussion with Adomas Narkevičius, Bruno Birmanis, Phyllis Cohen and Guus Beumer `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **7** ## Exhibition Report ## _Daydreamers_ Press Release ## Contents: Majd Abdel Hamid Exhibition Documentation Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road Exhibition Report Audience London E2 9DA Contact: info@cellprojects.org 18. Public Programme Press Coverage Project Partners: Cell Project Space (London, UK) in partnership with Fluxus Art Projects, with additional support from the Cockayne Foundation and The Elephant Trust. Curator Adomas Narkevičius ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **8** ``` Press Release ``` ## **Daydreamers** the way one might absentmindedly scribble musical notes. The leftover fabric is then folded into fortune tellers. ## Majd Abdel Hamid ## **`Opening Thursday 27 March 2025, 6-9pm 28 March – 25 May Open 12-6pm Thursday-Sunday`** _Daydreamers_ , Majd Abdel Hamid’s first solo exhibition in London, brings together a new and ongoing series of needlework. Initiated as early as 2012, these evolving and, at times, concluded bodies of work emerge from specific social and political moments, appearing as what the artist describes as ‘textures of memory’. Hamid engages with time as both material and medium, employing embroidery as a technique of recording, reflection and refusal. His work is guided by slowness and repetition, building up intensities of feeling over narrative enclosure, at odds with the accelerationist logic of algorithmic visual culture. If the modernist grid sought to impose order, his stitches waver – accumulations of attention, of intimate, even flawed, labour, and of time worked through, or ‘wasted’. _12-23 (End of Chapter)_ (2012–2023) is a series that began with nine embroidered portraits of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation on 17 December 2010 catalysed the Arab Spring. Hamid invited a woman from Farkha village to embroider one portrait, who then invited seven others. Hamid embroidered the ninth, making it his first embroidery project – a portrait that would gradually reduce in form over a decade. As figuration eroded, what remained was the name: Bouazizi, sewn onto a pillowcase using the leftover threads from the original commissions. The process moved through cycles of repetition, renunciation and reappearance, mapping the artist’s own dislocations – moments of departure, guilt and acceptance – across shifting geopolitical landscapes. A body of work made for this exhibition, _Daydreamers (Fortune Tellers)_ (2025–), extends Hamid’s interest in non-prescriptive futures. Over six hundred fortune tellers, modelled after the children’s origami game, become a ‘carpet’ of possibilities across the gallery floor. Unlike the game’s usual predetermined answers, Hamid’s fortune tellers bear no inscriptions, only the textures of the folded fabric, leaving the act of divination open-ended. What is folded can unfold, unconcealing, or perhaps reverting back to its source material. Crafted laboriously, they will be offered to be taken freely, one for each visitor, over the exhibition’s final two weeks. In London, a city where time is hyper-optimised and monetised, Hamid proposes a small act of gifting – without inscription, without demand. The movement from one series to another is a continuous cycle of transformation: from fabric to thread, from thread to woven code, from leftover material to an object of potential. Hamid’s work unmakes the grid as a structure of control in favour of the imperfect, emerging rhythms of the hand. His practice draws on Palestinian textile traditions while remaining unbound by historical forms – using embroidery as a means of evading both the hierarchies of art historical canons and the pressures of ideological symbolism. His gradually accumulating body of thousands of hours of work is a commitment to slowness – a refusal of the now-ubiquitous temporality of algorithmic attention extraction, which takes hold over the qualitative sensation of time. _Daydreamers_ marks a point of departure in the artist’s practice. If earlier works carry the repetitive compulsion to work through, here is a sense of release – not an erasure or a resolution but an opening towards what remains possible. It is a meditation on how everyday acts of making may partake in the understated project of continuity, possibility, quiet joy, and life. ## Curator Adomas Narkevičius _Majd Abdel Hamid is a visual artist from Palestine. He was born in Damascus in 1988, and is currently based between Beirut and Paris. He graduated from Malmö Art Academy, Sweden (2010) and attended the International Academy of Art in Palestine (2007-2009). Majd Abdel Hamid solo exhibitions include Signal, Malmö (2024) Muscle Memory, CCA: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; 800 meters and a corridor, gb agency, Paris (2022); A Stitch in Time, Fondation d’Entreprise Hermès, Brussels curated by Guillaume Desanges (2021). Majd Abdel Hamid’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Les voix des fleuves, Biennale de Lyon, Phenomenon 5, Anafi, When Solidarity is not a Metaphor, Venice Biennial, Dislocations, Portes ouvertes sur l’Art, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, (Re)generation, Prix Reiffers Art Initiatives, Paris (2024) Art Explora, Photograph Pavillion 2023 Hirafen, La Station, Denden, Tunis, Kyiv Biennial, Vienna Institut Français de Jerusalem, Qattan Foundation and Taawon Foundation, Material Power: Palestinian Embroidery, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge and the Whitworth, Manchester, UK (2023); Memory Sews Together Events That Hadn’t Previously Met, Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah; Splendid Isolation, SMAK, Ghent; La Beauté du Diable, Frac Franche-Comté, Besançon (2022); Répare, Reprise, Cité International des Arts, Paris, (2021); Heartbreak, Ruya Maps,Venice; Touché! (gesture, movement, action), Beirut Art Center, Beyrouth, (2019); at Krognoshuset Lund in Sweden (2016), the Valencia Institute of Modern Art in Spain and the Halil Saakini Cultural Center in Palestine (2018)._ _Daydreamers (Code)_ (2024–) seeks to introduce slippages within the binary zeros-and-ones logic of the Jacquard loom’s punch card, the machine that gave rise to automation and algorithmic coding. The series is made up of acts of unravelling and reconfiguring. It began with pieces of fabric collected by Hamid since his move to Beirut, materials accumulated but left unused. When already fraying, they are picked apart, then woven into small circles, building up texture. Each circle corresponds to a specific fabric, a trace of its former structure. The woven patterns appear as a ‘dysfunctional’ binary code, in ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **9** ## **`Daydreamers: Documentation`** Majd Abdel Hamid, Exhibition view, Daydreamers, 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 ## **`Majd Abdel Hamid`** `Daydreamers` `Opens Thursday 27th March 2025 6–9pm 28.03.2025 – 25.05.2025 Thursday–Sunday 12–6pm Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road London E2 9DA +44(0)208 9816336 info@cellprojects.org cellprojects.org` A2 Poster- Gallery Entrance & e-newsletter Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Code), 2024, 9 × 18 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **10** Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Music Box), 2025, dimensions variable, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Composition), 2024, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Son This is a Waste of Time, 2015–ongoing, 10.5 × 14.5 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **11** **----- Start of picture text -----**
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Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Fortune Tellers), 2025, dimensions variable, Cell Project Space, 2025
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Majd Abdel Hamid, Ode to the Sea (Soap), 2024, 6 × 3 × 6.5 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **12** Majd Abdel Hamid, Son This is a Waste of Time (from July to March), 2015–ongoing, 23 × 32 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Composition), 2024, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **13** Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Composition), 2024, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Code II), 2025, 9 × 9 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, 12 to 23 (End of Chapter), 2012–2023, 31.5 × 43.5 cm / 14.5 × 10.5 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **14** Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Notebooks), 2024, 12 × 16 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Daydreamers (Notebooks), 2024, 12 × 16 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Majd Abdel Hamid, Exhibition view, Daydreamers, 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **15** Majd Abdel Hamid, Exhibition view, Daydreamers, 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Private View Documentation Private View Documentation `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **16** Private View Documentation Private View Documentation Private View Documentation `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **17** ## **`Exhibition Report`** ## Project Description & Target Group: Daydreamers marked the first London solo exhibition by Palestinian artist Majd Abdel Hamid. The project brought together newly commissioned and ongoing textile works exploring memory, time, and resistance through. Targeting general audiences alongside engaged art publics, students, and youth groups, the exhibition opened up a contemplative, materially-driven space for thinking through time, labour, trauma, and political complexity beyond binary thought. The project aimed to introduce UK audiences to Abdel Hamid’s practice and its critical engagement with slowness, abstraction, and the binary logic. Through a newly commissioned series interrogating the historical Jacquard binary code system and its legacies, Daydreamers sought to destabilise dominant formal and political narratives by foregrounding intimate acts of making and gifting. The exhibition also reinforced Cell’s commitment to supporting emerging international artists at pivotal stages of their practice. Running from 28 March to 25 May 2025, Daydreamers was curated by Adomas Narkevičius and presented a selection of embroidered and sculptural works that unfold over years, some beginning as early as 2012. Majd Abdel Hamid’s practice functions within the context of Palestinian textile, yet it avoids the rigid pressures of a tradition, opting for open-ended forms, imperfect motif and intimate, unalienated labour as possibilities for continuity and refusal. His work engages the materiality of time itself, evoking slowness as a mode of resistance to algorithmic and capitalist acceleration. ## **`Audience:`** Daydreamers by Majd Abdel Hamid was open to the public from Thursday to Sunday over a nine-week period, welcoming over 900 visitors. Regular tours followed by audience Q&As, as well as targeted group visits and events were provided as effective, tailored forms of engagement with audiences of diverse needs, ages and levels of art knowledge. The exhibition attracted a wide range of visitors, including art professionals such as Angelina Radakovic (Curator, Mosaic Rooms), Julia Gardener (Gallerist, Hot Wheels), Ted Targett (Gallerist, Brunette Coleman), Tamara Chalabi (Independent Curator), Claude Adjil (Curator, Serpentine), Helena Reckitt (Curator, Researcher, Feminist Duration Reading Group), Zarina Muhammad (The White Pube), and writer Michael Kurtz. A visitor from Kunsthalle Basel also attended, following a recommendation from Mohamed Almusibli (Director, Kunsthalle Basel). Artists who visited included Mona Hatoum, Paul Noble, Georgina Starr, Coumba Samba, Gretchen Lawrence, Jack Jubb, and Giuseppi Cambana Rodriguez, Anne Robinson ## Group visits included: - Delfina Foundation’s artist cohort - Blackhorse Activators for The Looms workshop, a hands-on textile and storytelling session led by Cell’s Trainee Producers in response to Majd Abdel Hamid’s practice - Ben Jones’ patrons group from The Courtauld Institute - City Lit adult learners group, led by Chantal Condron - ICA Creative Youth Forum, led by Lyndon Harris The exhibition included three key series: 12-23 (End of Chapter), a decade-long embroidery project reworking the image of Mohamed Bouazizi; Daydreamers (Code), which disrupts the punchcard logic of Jacquard looms through woven circles made from unravelled fabric; and Daydreamers (Fortune Tellers), a new sculptural commission featuring over 600 hand-sewn objects freely given to visitors over the final weeks, a quiet act of distribution and care. In fluently communicating poetic and political aspects Hamid’s practice, the demonstrated the capacity of modest material forms to hold complicted affective and geopolitical content. A core achievement of the project was the establishment of Hamid’s practice in the UK context, opening pathways for further institutional collaborations and affirming Cell’s curatorial vision. The project also succeeded in embedding pedagogical and participatory elements to extend the exhibition’s reach via Student Producers’ Programme at Cell. Coordinating logistics across Beirut, Paris, and London was a key challenge, particularly in regards to the artist’s travel and well-being. That was sucesfully addressed through sustained open dialogue and mutual flexibility. - Goldsmiths Graduate Diploma in Art students, led by Mia Grassie-Clarke - Goldsmiths Art Department group, led by Bryan Munguia - UAL student group - Art patrons group led by artist and educator Aliki Braine ## Press & Digital Reach Daydreamers received notable online and print coverage, including a feature on Mousse Magazine, and a listing in Art Monthly. Online, the exhibition reached an extended audience of approximately 150,000 users, through targeted advertising, Cell’s website, social media platforms (Instagram: 15,400 followers; Facebook and X/Twitter), and Cell’s monthly newsletter (8,000 subscribers). The exhibition generated engagement via shared content, artist reposts, and newsletter, extending its visibility across UK and international audiences. Daydreamers proposed a slow and poetic alternative to the dominant grammars of visibility, positioning embroidery as both method and metaphor for how we might live, remember, and imagine otherwise. ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **18** **`Public Programme:`** ## **The Looms Workshop with Blackhorse Activators** In the _The Looms_ , Blackhorse Activators were invited to respond to artist Majd Abdel Hamid’s solo exhibition _Daydreamers_ through embroidery and needlework. Considering the slowness and repetition present in Majd’s process, the group used thread to engage with the subtle and imaginative forms of resistance the act of daydreaming can hold. Led by Trainee Producers, Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart, the workshop began with a tour of the exhibition, followed by a reflective discussion and a series of written responses, that focused on the artist’s engagement with ‘time’ both as material and medium. These responses identified stitching as a tool for sensing, sketching to process sensory experiences, and for reflection. Following an open-ended logic present in Hamid’s _Daydreamers_ , _The Looms_ offered a space where value was placed on making slowly, with outcomes that considered the potential of the non-prescriptive act of sketching within the context of a fast-paced London backdrop. _Blackhorse Activators are a group of 15-25 year olds from Walthamstow with a passion for applying creativity to build community, who meet monthly at Blackhorse Road Workshop and cultural venues in London. They are a graduate cohort from the Blackhorse Responders programme._ _Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart are Cell’s Trainee Producers, an initiative supported by Art Fund’s Student Art Pass. The seven-month structured programme offers two full-time students a paid work placement to work closely with Cell’s critically focused team to actively engage in all aspects of gallery operations, from supporting the delivery of exhibitions and events to enhancing audience engagement._ _The Looms_ Workshop Documentation _The Looms_ Workshop Documentation _The Looms_ Workshop Documentation `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **19** ## **`Press Coverage:`** ## **`Canvas:`** https://www.cellprojects.org/press/daydreamers-canvas ## **`MOUSSE Magazine:`** https://www.cellprojects.org/press/daydreamers-mousse-magazine `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **20** ## Exhibition Report ## _–1, plus One_ Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by ## Contents: Press Release ## Exhibition Documentation ## Exhibition Report Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road 32. Audience Pub lic Programme London E2 9DA Press Coverage Contact: info@cellprojects.org Cell Project Space (London, UK) with generous support from Phileas, The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art, The Austrian Ministry for Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport, and Cockayne Foundation Curator Adomas Narkevičius ``` cellprojects.org ``` ``` cellprojects.org ``` **21** **`Press Release`** ## **`Print Advertising: Art Review`** ## **-1, plus One** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by ## **`Opening Thursday 5 June 2025, 6-9pm 6 June 2025 – 10 August 2025 Open 12-6pm Thursday-Sunday`** ## **`-1, plus One`** ## **`-1, plus One`** `Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by Produced by 05.06.2025 - 10.08.2025 05.06.2025 - 10.08.2025` **----- Start of picture text -----**
Cell Project Space
258 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9DA
cellprojects.org
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Cell Project Space presents _-1, plus One_ , the first solo exhibition by artist Tanja Widmann in the United Kingdom. The exhibition is conceived as a site of negotiation - material, social, affective - where authorship is ‘beside itself’, as in the collaboration with Johannes Porsch | Produced by Johannes Porsch. Read together as _Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by -1, plus One_ , the title suggests a conceptual machine of addition and subtraction, of lack and desire, and of the conceptual structure producing subjects as much as subjects producing the structure. –1, plus One moves through the exhibition as a structuring condition. It introduces a logic of cut and supplementation, where subjectivity is formed through sequences of doubling, libidinal displacements and returns. Across the works, traces of automation of perception appear: film as flicker, the newspaper as cliché, and sound as drone – excess produces voids. Scripts, drawings, glass doors, seals and Hermès curb bits recur in variations and alterations, each staging a relation between control, address, and withdrawal. Across both floors, in the ‘lobby’, office, front and back gallery, the exhibition operates as a basic feedback system circulating economies of desire, production, and time. The curb bit functions as its ‘source code’ – a simple cybernetic object for regulating bodies and movement, initiating a logic that returns across elements. At once luxury commodity and fetish, it condenses an economic field of tangible exchange and of relation to the other. An industrial hum just audible before entry amplifies from the inside, dislocating the spatial and symbolic threshold through a barely perceptible doubling. Glass panels, leaning on the wall beside two thresholds, hold the possibilities (semantic, symbolic, affective, imaginary, art historical) of ‘door’ as an entry/exit configuration, reflecting visitors back into the system of which they are momentarily a part. These repetitions and omissions turn signification in on itself, testing what registers as difference and where thresholds begin to dissolve. The exhibition approaches its elements in a process of ‘montage’, as if a film neither fixed nor linear; assembled in real time, cut and edited by each recipient. Subjectivation is registered in these circuits as delays, gaps, intervals and recursions, as the labour of staying in relation to a structure that shifts with each iteration. Tanja Widmann’s practice navigates the material constraints and social fictions that regulate contemporary life, tracing the symbolic and economic circuits through which value is produced and circulated. Scripts - readymade objects, images, texts - serve as source code: for reception, (re)production, and deviation. Working with the everyday tech of the home office, laptop, printer, cell phone, etc. – and materials from the hardware store, Widmann’s works function as coded feedback loops: degraded, recomposed. Drawing on the Pictures Generation and Charles Baudelaire, the cliché becomes preferred data. `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **22** `Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road London E2 9DA +44(0)208 9816336 info@cellprojects.org cellprojects.org` Johannes Porsch develops displays that operate as performative sets – objects that articulate the conditions of their own visibility. In dialogue with post-minimal and post-conceptual strategies, they foreground use-value and destabilise autonomy by rendering its heteronomous supports. These structures sustain positions and enable relations, anticipating events while modulating presence. Abstraction does not generalise; it fractures reflexivity, revealing labour as both structural and obscured. What appears autonomous is revealed as contingent, on holding, showing, connecting. Status – objectal or relational – is the effect of ongoing negotiation. `Opens Thursday 5th June 2025 6–9pm 06.06.2025 – 10.08.2025 Thursday–Sunday 12–6pm` ## Curator Adomas Narkevičius _Tanja Widmann lives and works in Vienna and Munich. Recent exhibitions: ‘Echo’s Hunger, Schiefe Zähne’, Berlin (2025); 15th Baltic Triennial: ‘Same Day’, CAC, Vilnius (2024); ‘dysfunctional malappropriation’, University Gallery of the Angewandte, Vienna (2024); ‘Lying Daughters. Produced by Johannes Porsch’, FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna (2023); ‘Since 1884. Produced by Johannes Porsch’, New Toni, Berlin (2022); ‘Cybernetics of the Poor’, Kunsthalle Wien (2020), ‘V’, FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna (2020). Her practice also takes shape in text, publication, workshop, and curatorial formats, often in dialogue with others. Exhibitions: ‘Industry / Against Nature’, FELIX GAUDLITZ, Vienna (2022), and ‘Post-Apocalyptic Realism’, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2017). Publications: ‘Post-Apocalyptic Realism’ (Tonio Kröner, Laura Preston, Tanja Widmann, eds., Walther König, 2019); ‘Postapocalyptic Self-Reflection’ (Laura Preston, Tanja Widmann, eds., Westphalie Verlag, 2018); ‘To Make Oneself Similar in This Sense’ (artist’s book, Westphalie Verlag, 2012). A new artist’s book will be published by New Toni Press in summer 2025._ _Johannes Porsch lives and works in Vienna, selected exhibitions include: ‘Rehearsals of Metabolism’, Kunstverein Kevin Space Vienna (2025); ‘Peche Pop’, Museum of applied arts Vienna (2024); ‘Key Operators. Weaving and coding as languages of feminist historiography’, Kunstverein Munich (2024); ‘to care, to display, to support’, Universitätsgalerie der University of applied arts Vienna (2024); ‘currently not available’ ,Julius Koller Society, Bratislava (2019); ‘tropology’, Kunstraum Lakeside Klagenfurt (2018); ‘Tropology’, Tiroler Künstlerschaft Innsbruck (2017); ‘Julius Koller. One Man Anti Show’, mumok, Wien (2016); Kyiv Biennal (2015); ‘Unrest of Form. Imagining the Political Subject’, Secession Vienna, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2013); ‘Aa’, Salzburger Kunstverein (2012); ‘Counter-Production’, Generali Foundation Vienna (2012); ‘Moments. A History of Performance in 10 Acts’, ZKM (2012); ‘Troubling Research’, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2011). Johannes Porsch studied at the University of applied Arts Vienna and the Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht._ **`-1, plus One`** `Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by` `05.06.2025 - 10.08.2025` ## **`-1, plus One`** `Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by` `05.06.2025 - 10.08.2025` `Opens Thursday 5th June 2025 6–9pm 06.06.2025 – 10.08.2025 Thursday–Sunday 12–6pm` `Cell Project Space 258 Cambridge Heath Road London E2 9DA +44(0)208 9816336 info@cellprojects.org cellprojects.org` A2 Poster- Gallery Entrance & e-newsletter `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **23** ## **`-1, plus One: Documentation`** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Exhibition view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivates)_ , 2025, Ø 2.4 x 1.5 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Exhibition view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **24** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivates)_ , 2025, Ø 2.4 x 1.5 cm and _-1, One plus (Script)_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivate)_ , detail, 2025, 194.1 x 86.5 x 0.8 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Script)_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **25** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivate)_ , 2025, 194.1 x 86.5 x 0.8 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivates)_ , 2025, Ø 2.4 x 1.5 cm and _-1, One plus (Cherry on top)_ , 2025, 29.7 x 21 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **26** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Exhibition view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Cherry on top)_ , 2025, 29.7 x 21 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Exhibition view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **27** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Bit)_ , 2025, 14.8 x 15.5 x 2.4 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Bit)_ , detail, 2025, 14.8 x 15.5 x 2.4 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **28** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivate)_ , 2025, 32.3 x 23.4 x 0.25 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivate)_ , 2025, Ø 24.9, stereo audio, 16:24 sec, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **29** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Derivate)_ , 2025, 32.3 x 23.4 x 0.25 cm and -1, One plus (Derivate), 2025, 32.3 x 23.4 x 0.25 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (The Horse Fair)_ , single channel video, 2:36 mins, 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, _-1, One plus (Protocol)_ , 2025, 29.7 x 21 cm, Cell Project Space, 2025 Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Installation view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **30** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by, Installation view, _-1, plus One_ , 2025, Cell Project Space, 2025 Private View Documentation Private View Documentation Private View Documentation `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **31** **`Exhibition Report / Project Narrative:`** _–1, plus One_ was the first UK solo exhibition by Austrian artist Tanja Widmann, produced in close collaboration with artist and writer Johannes Porsch. Staged across both floors of Cell Project Space, including its office space, the exhibition proposed the gallery as a conceptual machine, circulating feedback, delay, and symbolic drift, where subjectivity emerged through sequences of doubling, displacement, and return. The exhibition’s structuring condition, reflected in its title, was one of cut and supplementation: a logic of lack and desire where the subject was formed in relation to, and through, the operations of a shifting structure. Authorship, too, appeared ‘beside itself’. Read together as ‘Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by –1, plus One’, the exhibition title suggested a recursive system, where structure produces subjects as much as subjects produce structure. Private View Documentation With Porsch, Tanja Widmann explored how design mediates movement and control, drawing on horse harnesses and curb bits as objects of physical and social regulation, and as source code for a sculptural and conceptual language of the exhibition. Hermès Kandare curb bit, the assisted readymade, functioned as the exhibition’s central motif and cybernetic kernel: a simple object of bodily governance, recast as luxury, fetish, and interface between bodies. Alongside it, leaning glass panels for standardised office doors, reflected back material and symbolic thresholds. Circumnavigating the binary state of ‘in or out’, they staged entry and exit as open feedback circuits, reflecting viewers back into the apparatus of the exhibition space they briefly occupied. A reworking of Rosa Bonheur’s famous painting ‘The Horse Fair’ (1853) to a flicker film displayed on loop on a smartphone operated as a historical hinge, collapsing the representation of domination and inter-species display into a meditation on institutional choreography, informational noise, and address. These concerns extended across scripts, drawings, seals, sound, and film, each modulating how bodies are figured or withdrawn. The flicker film, embedded sound recordings, and layers of film and TV series subtitle transcription _(‘–1, One plus (Script)’) p_ roduced recursive perceptual circuits where cliché, automation, and excess rendered voids rather than meanings. The exhibition also intervened into the gallery’s administrative protocols: ‘–1, One plus (Protocol)’ tasked staff with logging the duration of each visitor’s stay using repurposed Excel sheets that previously tracked this exhibition’s production budgets. Bureaucratic instruments were folded back into the exhibition, complicating where display ends and infrastructure begins. Throughout, Tanja Widmann’s and Johannes Porsch’s works reflected on conditions of production, value, and circulation. The formal vocabulary of _–1, plus One_ drew on the language of the office, the hardware store, appropriation art, and institutional critique, reprogramming materials and gestures into feedback loops that withheld resolution. If seen as a film, it was not so much a linear narrative story, but a live montage, cut and resequenced with each variation, visitor, and encounter. Private View Documentation `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **32** ## **`Audience:`** ## **`Public Programme:`** ## **`‘CTRL+C, CTRL V’ - Blackhorse Activators Workshop`** Tanja Widmann Johannes Porsch Produced by _–1, plus One_ was open to the public from Thursday to Sunday over a ten-week period, welcoming an 437. Regular tours, informal discussions, as well as workshops and targeted visits were used as effective, responsive forms of engagement, welcoming a wide range of audience backgrounds and levels of familiarity with conceptual and installation-based practices. The exhibition was visited by a range of art professionals such as Alvin Li (Curator for International Art, Tate Modern), Fiontan Moran (Curator, Tate Modern), Dina Akhmadeeva (Assistant Curator, Tate Modern), Ted Targett (Co-founder, Brunette Coleman), Laurie Barron (Associate Director, Herald St), Chris McCormack (Editor-in-Chief, Art Monthly), Olivia Aherne (Curator, Chisenhale), Bianca Stoppani (Curator, Fondazione Between Art&Film), Alexander Leissle (Editor, ArtReview), Lore Alender (Editor, Emergent), Alexandra Symons Sutcliffe (art writer), Rahma Khazam (writer/ academic), Michael Kurtz (art writer, Art Monthly, e-flux, ArtReview), Denise Lai (curator, Associate Director, ROH Projects), Berta Zubrickaitė (Assistant Director, Edel Assanti), and Milda Batakytė (Curator, Auto Italia). Artists who visited included Merlin Carpenter, Sam Lipp, John Smith, Alan Michael, Jasper Marsalis, Lauren Auder, and Ana Viktoria Dzinic, alongside performance duo Rat Section and artist-critic Olesia Shuvarikova. In _CTRL+C, CTRL V,_ Blackhorse Activators were invited to explore and respond to Tanja Widmann, Johannes Porsch Produced By _-1, plus One_ exhibition. The workshop explored the ‘script’ as raw material to be rewritten, remixed, and transformed. Led by Trainee Producers, Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart, the session began with a tour of the exhibition that treated the show as a mystery that needed to be uncovered, encouraged investigation, curiosity and dialogue rather than leaning on provided preexisting definitions. The group took part in an introductory writing exercise, based around subjective experience and personal interpretation of the exhibition - which were then broken down into keywords, patterns, and structures that caught the eye. Using printers, scanners, and analogue processes, these fragments were reworked into new visual layouts and drawings, with no prescribed rules for their transformation. Prompts drawn from the group’s independent exploration of the gallery, such as ‘How does the space make you feel?’ or ‘What does this remind you of?’ - guided the process. In the final stage, participants placed their reconfigured texts and artworks onto a large canvas in the exhibition space, creating a collaborative composition that formed a visible dialogue between their responses and the original works. ## Group visits included: - A guided tour for art advisor Justė Jonutytė’s invited group - Delfina Foundation alumni and friends visiting with curator Erin-Li– - Targeted invitations to Cell’s local network of curators, artists, and writers - Ongoing peer visits from artists in London’s experimental project space ecosystem - Workshop- with Blackhorse Activators & Goldsmiths Writing group ## Press & Digital Reach –1, plus One was shared via Cell’s online channels and through the networks of the artists and curators. The exhibition reached an approximate online audience of over 150,000, through advertising on ArtReview and e-flux, Cell’s website, social media platforms (Instagram: 18,600 followers; Facebook and Threads), and Cell’s monthly newsletter (8,000+ subscribers). The show generated engagement via reposts, critical mentions, and peer-to-peer sharing, extending its visibility across UK and international contemporary art audiences. Blackhorse Activators ‘CTRL+C, CTRL V’ Workshop, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **33** **Blackhorse Activators** are a group of 15-25 year olds from Walthamstow with a passion for applying creativity to build community, who meet monthly at Blackhorse Road Workshop and cultural venues in London. They are a graduate cohort from the Blackhorse Responders programme. ## **`‘A Slow Roasted Subject, And A Lengthy Buffet’ - Workshop With The Golsdmiths Art Writing Group`** _A Slow Roasted Subject, And A Lengthy Buffe_ t - workshop led by Goldsmiths alumni Frank Wates and Oli Mardon, facilitated by Cell’s Trainee Producers Varvara Uhlik and Sam Stewart, invited members of the Goldsmiths Art Writing Group to respond to the Tanja Widmann, Johannes Porsch Produced By _-1, plus One_ exhibition. Participants began with stream-of-consciousness writing, using the exhibition as a prompt. Inspired by Raymond Queneau’s Exercises in Style - a book that retells the same story 99 times in different styles, they each rewrote their texts in a new ‘voice’, such as noble, visual, or prosthetic. Pages were exchanged, sentences erased and rewritten, allowing the texts to evolve through editing process of addition and deletion. The pieces became playful cybernetic systems, drawing on the exhibition’s interest in repetition and variation. Finally, fragments were cut out and placed around the exhibition, turning the gallery into a mirrored feedback loop between artwork, artist and audience. “ _The compositional aspect of group writing - with its distributed and circulating forms of authorship - strikes a productive and timely experiment, especially within and in response to the exhibition’s periperformative conditions_ .” - Johannes Porsch & Tanja Widmann. Left and right: Blackhorse Activators ‘CTRL+C, CTRL V’ Workshop, Cell Project Space, 2025 Blackhorse Activators ‘CTRL+C, CTRL V’ Workshop, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **34** **`Press Coverage:`** **The Goldsmiths Art Writing Group** is a student-led collective setup by artists Frank Wates and Oli Mardon, exploring writing as an artistic practice. ## **`Springerin:`** Left and right: Blackhorse Activators ‘CTRL+C, CTRL V’ Workshop, Cell Project Space, 2025 `cellprojects.org` `cellprojects.org` **35** CONSTIUNDE Mega Francis SULLIVAN'S TEWOrKINE OL KOSa DONMMCUIS Je 10TS€ LIT (LBIL-1LBII) **`FAKEWALE:`** tums out to be a mirrored image. Here too, the original image is doubled, fragmented, and transposed into another medium before it finally reaches the viewer. FAMEWHALE LEGG otscrTs = ALocuES «AUTHORS ~—REVIEWS «= GALLERY, «ICONS. «NEWSLETTER © CONTACT Q inro@® Some of the objects in the exhibition could be construed as addressing matters of political or social concer, even though these are never explicitly mentioned. The pair of curb bits conjure up issues READ NEXT 1 of domination and exploitation of animals. while the name of the luxury brand Hermes is synonymous with exclusivity and wealth. The three film scripts also deal with wealth and power, my looking at how they shape the value and meaning of interpersonal relationships. Jndustry is a TANJA WIDMANN & contemporary TV series about individuals caught up in the world of high finance, while Jacques chighland opel eee Demy's Peau d'dne (Donkey Skin, 1970) tells the tale of a king who tries to force his own daughter