Thu 9 Apr 2026, 6 - 8.30pm
| Monday | Closed |
| Tuesday | 11am–6pm |
| Wednesday | 11am–6pm |
| Thursday | 11am–9pm |
| Friday | 11am–6pm |
| Saturday | 11am–6pm |
| Sunday | 11am–6pm |
Access requirements
Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact access@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
This event takes place in the Assembly Room at Whitechapel Gallery, located on the ground floor.
This event lasts approximately 2.5 hours. Attendees are encouraged to take as many breaks as they need during the event.
You must purchase a ticket to attend the event. If you require a Personal Assistant to support your attendance, we can offer them a seat free of charge, but it must be arranged in advance.
If the ticket price affects your attendance, please email tickets@whitechapelgallery.org to be added to the guest list (no questions asked, but dependent on availability).
This event is suitable for those over the age of 16
We are unable to provide British Sign Language interpretation for this event
We are unable to provide live closed captioning or CART for this event.
An audio recording of the event can be obtained by emailing publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org following the event.
Transport
To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
Live Recording
Please note: we audio record all events for the Whitechapel Gallery Archive and possible future online publication via Soundcloud.
An evening of sound, poetry, and performance that returns to the elemental, to explore what remains after so much has been lost, abandoned, or destroyed.
Bringing together their profound experiments in spoken and drawn poems, radio waves, and noise, four unique performers – Stephen Watts, Mengting Zhuo, Ayesha Hameed and Matt Cargill – will collaborate in a one-off performance in the Assembly Room at Whitechapel Gallery.
Rather than asking ‘why write’ or ‘why make art’ after catastrophes (historical, ecological, psychic), we admit the inevitability of poetry and art and find out what will be externalised through that impulse or reflex. What may be enabled or summoned or witnessed?
Organised in partnership with the Centre for Contemporary Writing at Queen Mary, University of London and Whitechapel Gallery.
There will be vegetarian food provided by OITIJ-JO Kitchen, and a selection of wine, beer, and soft drinks. (Free with a ticket.)
Ayesha Hameed is an artist and writer. She has two books forthcoming in Autumn 2026: Black Atlantis (Strange Attractor/MIT Press) and Radio Brown Atlantis (CARA, NY). She’s Professor of Artistic Research at University of the Arts Helsinki and teaches on the MFA at Goldsmiths University of London.
Matt Cargill is original member of Sly & The Family Drone is a British experimental music collective formed in 2008. Their work combines improvised live performances with a mixture of electronics and acoustic instruments, creating unpredictable and immersive experiences.
Mengting Zhuo (b. Guangzhou, China, 1990) composes performative situations with site, sound, body and time, in the forms of live art, participatory installation, concerts and relational curation. She uses contingency as a method to explore and unsettle systems of perception, communication and social relation.
With a background in literature, critical theory and indie music, her work is as concerned with language as with composition and the unspoken. She studied Performance Making at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she is now based. She has created encounters in theatres, galleries and other settings, from public and domestic spaces to online, across the UK, Europe and East Asia, including Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; BY ART MATTERS, China; MAO Torino, Italy; esea contemporary, Manchester.
Stephen Watts‘ most recent books include Republic Of Dogs/Republic Of Birds(Test Centre, 2016 & Prototype, 2020 & repr. ’25), from which Huw Wahl made a film The Republics in 2019, and Journeys Across Breath : Poems 1975-2005(Prototype, 2022 & repr. ’25). His A Book Of Drawn Poems was published in 2025 by Sylvia Editions & he edited Swirl Of Words/Swirl Of Worlds for PEER Gallery in 2021. The exhibition Explosion Of Words in 2022 in London & Zurich with Swiss artist Hannes Schupbach focussed on Stephen’s translation research & his co-translation of Iranian poet Ziba Karbassi’s Lemon Sun is due from Tenement Press in June 2026. He has also published inter alia co-translations of the Iraqi poet Adnan al-Sayegh & the Kurdish Syrian poet Golan Haji. His books Explosion Of Words : Poems 2006-2026 & The Language Of It are both forthcoming.
Based in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London, the new Centre for Contemporary Writing hosts literary events, research and practice workshops, and publishes the Subtexts creative writing journal. Follow them on social media to find out more.
