HOT LIST: 27/02/2025
- Mathilde Candotto-Carniel
- Feb 27
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 5
As spring approaches and the days start to feel a bit longer, you might be wondering what to fill them with. Luckily, as every week, we've compiled a curated list of hot events you should put on your agenda. This week, we have several talks and conversations lined up for those interested in everything from photography and activism to cinema and making it in the creative industries. The list also features events such as an exhibition tour, a museum late, and a film screening with DJs - keep reading to discover them all.
TALK
SELF DEFENCE IS NO OFFENCE! A HISTORY OF ANTI-RACISM IN EAST LONDON
RICH MIX
Shoreditch High Street | 27 February 19:00
Join the conversation with veterans of East London's anti-fascist struggles, past and present.
From the 1936 Battle of Cable Street to the Altab Ali protests in 1978, to the resistance against the English Defence League and the Palestine solidarity demonstrations in 2024, East London has a rich and proud history of successfully organising against racist organisations, the police and states.
In this public meeting, we will hear from some of those involved in these past and present struggles against racism, and learn about the ways in which local communities and groups were able to analyse, organise, confront and resist fascism and racism. As the far-right attempt to remobilise and attack our communities, we think about what lessons we can learn to build an effective working-class, multi-racial, anti-racist movement that keeps each another safe and defeats the far-right.
Find out more and book your free spot here.
TALK
MAXIMUM EVERYTHING: EXCESS AND (UN)RESPECTABILITY IN CLUB PERFORMANCE
TATE
Bankside | 1 March 14:00 - 16:00
Nightclubs have provided vital space for artists to make transgressive performance art. Dr Phoebe Patey-Ferguson hosts a conversation with artists Kazuko Hohki, Rose Cory and Tamm Reynolds. Together they explore excess in queer and feminist counter-culture and performance.
Maximum Everything is offered as part of Acceptable at the Time?, a day exploring the bold ideas embodied by the lives and practices of Leigh Bowery and Helen Chadwick.
All information and tickets here.
EXHIBITION TOUR
WHAT IS IT LIKE?: EXHIBITION TOUR 1
AREBYTE
Canning Town | 1 March 13:30-14:30
Join a curated tour of arebyte's current exhibition What is it Like?, led by artist the guest curator Helen Starr and some of the participating artists.
What Is It Like? is a group exhibition that explores the nature of subjective reality. Inspired by Thomas Nagel’s seminal 1974 paper, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, the exhibition celebrates how artists use AI tools and techniques to craft cultural meaning, bridging creativity, innovation and humanity into our rapidly evolving technological landscape.
The exhibition delves into language, memory, and the boundaries of consciousness, shedding light on why AI models currently remain incapable of true sentience, emotion, or self-awareness. Through artworks employing soundscapes, VR, game engines, and the metaverse, it invites viewers to navigate the layered complexities of perception, experience, and consciousness—mirroring with its interactive stage-crafting how AI technologies generate immersive yet illusory realities.
Read more and book your free ticket here.
MUSEUM LATE
FRIDAY LATE: A THREAD OF LIGHT
V&A SOUTH KENSINGTON
South Kensington | 28 February 18:30-22:00
To mark the Jameel Prize: Moving Images exhibition, Muslim Sisterhood curates a Friday Late celebrating contemporary art and diasporic identity from the SWANA region.
Inspired by the Jameel Prize’s exploration of Islamic traditions in contemporary culture, join us to reflect on art’s role in fostering resilience amidst global challenges faced by Muslim communities. Through performances, films, workshops, installations and panel discussions, the evening celebrates how creatives reshape and envision a future for Muslim identities, reflecting Muslim Sisterhood’s dedication to joy, unity, and resilience.
The evening’s title is inspired by the film A Thread of Light Between My Mother’s Fingers and Heaven by Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, on display in the Jameel Prize: Moving Images exhibition.
The evening is drop-in, find all details here.
LISTENING SESSION
CANDLELIGHT LISTENING SESSION: KENDRICK LAMAR
NIGHT TALES LOFT
Hackney Central | 4 March 19:00
A laid-back of Kendrick Lamar’s greatest hits surrounded by over 200 candles.
Book here.
TALK
NICER TUESDAYS: MARCH
EARTH
Dalston Kingsland | 4 March 18:00-21:00
It’s Nice That hosts an evening of creative talks at EartH Hackney. During the event, speakers from across the creative sphere take to the podium to share insights from a recent landmark project, showing the ideas and processes behind its making.
This edition, taking to the Nicer Tuesday’s stage will be the founders of The White Pube – the online magazine here to call out “the overly stale, pale and male state of the art industry”. Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad, will be taking us behind the scenes of the world of art criticism and their recently published debut book Poor Artists.
The other speakers include music video director and filmmaker Will Norman, who will be transporting us to London’s iconic grime scene, cartoonist Stella Murphy, a creative whose abstract characters and psychedelic senses have touched the pages of The New York Times and come to life in commissions for Adult Swim, Nike, Ace and Tate and more, and global branding agency Koto.
Find out more about the speakers and buy your tickets here.
SCREENING & DJS
REBEL REEL CINE CLUB: TOKYO DREAMS - BRANDED TO KILL & TOKYO TOY BOY
RIO CINEMA
Dalston Kingsland | 5 March 19:30
Rebel Reel Cine Club presents a night to celebrate the dreams and anti-dreams of Tokyo, Japan. They'll be screening Seijun Suzuki’s bonkers super stylish masterpiece about the third-rated assassin in Japan - it’s so much more than a Yakuza flick - more in the vein of a hard-boiled soundtrack-heavy, brilliant, cool New Wave-looking 60s fashion film. They've also got a truly enlightening short documentary from Belgium Graduate Esli Khan Balatova about a 24-year-old former host boy in the shady neighbourhoods of Tokyo who bears the scars of a lost generation.
There will be DJs before and after the films, starting from 19:00.
Find out more and buy your ticket here.
TALK
IN CONVERSATION: CÉLINE SCIAMMA ON CHANTAL AKERMAN
BFI SOUTHBANK
Waterloo | 8 March 20:30
Join a unique tour of Chantal Akerman's work from Céline Sciamma, the director of acclaimed features including Girlhood (2014) and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019). Akerman's cinema has had a profound influence on the French screenwriter and director. The Belgian auteur's radicalism has long inspired Sciamma on set but also shaped her wider view of filmmaking. Join us for a unique tour of Akerman's work from a director who believes that the art form should always be under the influence of teenagers in their bedrooms.
This event will have British Sign Language (BSL) interpretation and live captioning.
All details and tickets here.
SCREENING & TALK
THE BACKSTREET: SCREENING + Q&A
STUDIO VOLTAIRE
Clapham | 13 March 19:00 - 20:00
This is a unique chance to see The Backstreet, an intimate film exploration of four decades of desire, community, love and loss at the iconic London gay leather club.
‘Sweat, moans, the haze of smoke and the rugged smell of leather. This is The Backstreet – London's secret haven for leathermen. After 37 years in existence, the club stands on the brink of permanent closure. Facing the demolition of their erotic haven, regulars and staff recount their memories – the sweaty darkroom encounters, a master-slave couple’s first kiss, a spiritual encounter during a BDSM session, and the terror and loss of the HIV pandemic. Meanwhile, the owner, the manager and a curator from the Museum of London go through boxes, finding erotic birthday cake designs, leather jockstraps and homophobic tabloid cuttings. As the space awaits demolition, what will The Backstreet’s legacy be?’
Following the screening, Romain Beck, the film’s director, and John Edwards, the founder of The Backstreet, will hold a Q&A.
This film is screened as part of the public programme for Prem Sahib, Documents of a recent past.
Tickets here.
PERFORMANCE
SHUE LEA CHEANG AND DONDON HOUNWN: HAGAY DREAMING
TATE MODERN
Southwark | 13 March to 15 March
Experience this theatrical performance drawing together ancient myths with futuristic technologies. Through dance, movement, instrumentals, ritual and chant, Hagay Dreaming recounts a story based on an ancient legend connected to the Truku indigenous culture of Taiwan. On stage, performers move within intricate light beams projected by a choreography of lasers.
This new theatrical production is an artistic collaboration by Taiwanese-American artist Shu Lea Cheang and indigenous performance artist and practicing shaman Dondon Hounwn. Connecting Cheang’s new media practice with Hounwn’s inheritance of tribal ballads and rituals, Hagay Dreaming combines advanced technologies with traditional ways of performing tribal culture.
Shu Lea Cheang often creates sci-fi narratives and in Hagay Dreaming the pair present an artistic vision for a future reality based on the ‘Gaya’ living principle of the Truku people. For them, Gaya is a spiritual world that is everywhere and everything, in which all living creatures are understood as connected and non-binary.
Find out more and book your tickets here.
