Past Events – Project DIVFUSE

Informal Formats : Sue Lynch & Douglas Benford (& Iris Colomb)

Acoustic Improvisations + Recording :

Day One – Formats [Sue Lynch & Douglas Benford]
Session One 29 November 2025 Saturday 4:30pm
Session Two 29 November Saturday 6:30pm

Day Two – Informals [Sue Lynch & Douglas Benford & Iris Colomb]
Session Three 30 November Sunday 3:30pm
Session Four 30 November Sunday 5:30pm

£8 | 6 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Running Time : 45 minutes approx.

Acoustic improvisations and explorations flowing from artwork and experimental poetry.

Over two days this Sue Lynch and Douglas Benford collaboration is based around performances, incorporating Lynch’s own projected visual art and Colomb’s found text improvisations.

Lynch employs saxophone and flute, whilst Benford uses tenor recorder, accordian, objects and melodica. Performances would encompass accidents and expressions with a multi media slant, as both musicians react to the visual aspects and surreal poetic excursions by Iris Colomb on Day Two.

Stewart Morgan will be recording the performances on Sunday. The concept of Project DIVFUSE curatorial line DIVFUSE Recording Room is to provide an intimate space for live recordings to be carried out, where sound from the outside working yard and the audience might come into the mix.

Chill Out : Cameron Randall & Demelza Toy Toy

Sound Installation :

24 October 2025 Friday
Session One 6pm
Session Two 7pm
Session Three 8pm

Free Entry. To book a place, visit: Tickets

Chill Out is a reimagining of the chill-out rooms of 1990s club venues. Not merely a pastiche of these spaces, Chill Out is an attempt to resurrect, in a contemporary context, the ethos of experimental sound practice and listening to cultivate a community where value is assigned to social and sacred economies. How might we chill out in the era of grind culture and hyper-capitalism? And what might be the outcome of this speculative thinking?

The event presents composed pieces and sound installations specifically created for the evening, decentralising the spectacle of the human and encouraging curious contemplation. The first iteration will see Demelza Woodbridge AKA Demelza Toy Toy show Chronophonix, a sound piece where participants are invited to listen with their body as they are guided through time to meet their future selves. Cameron Randall will show Coral Orx, a quadraphonic installation of remixed chill-out, ambient, and IDM releases, primarily from the 1990s.

Recent Sound Films : Guy Sherwin

Film screenings + Conversations with the artist :

Session One 17 October 2025 Friday 6:30pm [Private View – by invitation] [FULL]
Session Two 18 October Saturday 4pm [FULL]
Session Three 18 October Saturday 6pm [Private View – by invitation] [3 places left]
Session Four 19 October Sunday 4pm

£8 for both Private View and Open Sessions | 8 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Running Time : 30 minutes approximately + 45 minutes conversations

Poster by Livia Garcia. Drawing by Guy Sherwin.

Our curatorial line DIVFUSE Artist’s Journal presents Recent Sound Films by Guy Sherwin, where a selection of the artist’s latest short digital films will be shown. The screening will be followed by conversations between the artists and the audience.

DIVFUSE Artist’s Journal is a platform for artists, particularly those who work alone, to present their in-progress work with the aim to get some feedback and responses to help with further development.

‘Each of these films arrived at its form, and thereby any possible meaning, by a circuitous route, often starting with a single shot and then by attempting to understand those few seconds of film through the processes of digital video with its myriad possibilities.

Project DIVFUSE EXTERNAL

19 August 2025 Tuesday 7:30pm

This is our first off-site event and we are thrilled to be running it at Café OTO.

Bringing together nine artists and musicians who have exhibited or performed at DIVFUSE micro art exhibition space in Lower Clapton E5 since its doors first opened to public in July 2021, this evening is to celebrate different aspects of the making of experimental sound and multi-media art as well as the 4th anniversary of the project.

Tickets can be bought directly from the OTO website:
https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/project-divfuse-external/

PROGRAMME:

– Steve Beresford + Cath Roberts – improvising to film scores by Livia Garcia

– Blanc Sceol – live sound streaming from Channelsea River + performance

– Jez riley French + Pheobe riley Law – field recordings, microphones and objects

– Mute Frequencies – sonic signatures of sewing machines and radios

44 Gatherings : Gabriella Day

44 Gatherings by Gabriella Day (UK) is one of the three sets of work that are selected from DIVFUSE Film Archive Open Call No.1 with a theme on domesticity.

Film Screenings:
Session One 9 August Saturday 4pm (+artist’s talk) [Cancelled]
Session Two 9 August Saturday 6pm (+ artist’s talk) [Cancelled]
Session Three 10 August Sunday 3pm
Session Four 10 August Sunday 4:30pm

£8 for sessions with artist’s talk and £5 for other sessions | 8 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Running time: 31 minutes.

44 Gatherings (2025) is a film that creates a space between abstraction and figuration with a familiar human gesture: folding sheets. The performers, who are folding sheets of household fabric, were given basic restrictions of filming without being choreographed so that this single-take captures moments of vulnerability and awkwardness. The live guitar, played by Michael Raphael, responds to the movement of the performers as well as the formal qualities of the fabric. The repetition of this over-looked activity aims to abstract the movement into colour and form and to create an ever-changing composition.

Gabriella Day (b. 1998, Bristol) is an artist based between London and Glasgow working with painting, film and collage. Throughout all mediums, Gabriella’s work aims to find automatic compositions that capture the act of placing forms together without an initial intention to make a picture, something that is often found in acts of daily life. Through this process, Day’s work fragments moments of representation until colour and form are at the forefront.

@gabrielladay

Image by Gabriella Day

Notes on Listening : Francisco Mazza & Raquel Diniz

Notes on Listening (UK) is one of the three sets of work that are selected from DIVFUSE Film Archive Open Call No.1 with a theme on domesticity.

Film Screenings + Audio Essay + Photography Documentation :

Session One 25 July 2025 Friday 7pm (+ artist’s talk) [FULL]
Session Two 26 July Saturday 3pm
Session Three 26 July Saturday 4:30pm
Session Four 26 July Saturday 6pm (+ artist’s talk)
Session Five 27 July Sunday 3pm
Session Six 27 July Sunday 4:30pm

£8 for sessions with artist’s talk and £5 for other sessions | 8 places only per session | Please email divfuse@gmail.com for tickets

Running time : 45 minutes. The screenings will be presenting the experimental film Notes on Listening (2024), an audio essay More Than Background (2023) and a series of photography by Raquel Diniz on the making of Notes on Listening.

Notes on Listening is a groundbreaking practice-based research film that captures the essence of people, sound, and place in Peckham, London—a neighbourhood on the brink of cultural displacement due to gentrification. Winner of the prestigious BAFTSS Award (British Association of Film, TV, and Screen Media Studies) in 2024, this experimental documentary employs a unique ‘sensory documentary’ approach. Using sound as the driving force, it immerses viewers in Peckham’s vibrant yet threatened community.

What the judges from BAFTSS had to say:

“The panel agreed that NOTES ON LISTENING is a highly original sound-driven narrative documentary that successfully puts the audience inside the area it explores, Peckham in London. The film skilfully represents the complex and unique soundscape of this London borough, giving a visual and sonic sense of its vivacity and vibrancy. In doing so, it makes a clear case for resisting the impending threats posed by encroaching gentrification. The panel commended the filmmaker’s creative and intricate approach, which provides a vivid evocation of Peckham’s rich cultural life.”