Yesterday’s event at Somerset House Studios in London formed part of Assembly 2026, a three‑day experimental sound and music programme featuring new commissions, performances, installations, and talks.

British artist and Turner Prize winner Jasleen Kaur presented her first performance work, Supra. Developed in collaboration with Marged Siôn, a recording of the performance will go on to serve as the score for Kaur’s upcoming installation at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh this May.

Performers Gurleen Singh, Devin Brown, and Marged Siôn merged vocals, dilruba and trumpet to produce an engaging, almost jazz‑like soundscape. An accompanying sound installation or backing track effectively unified the performances, although at one brief moment it flirted with 1980s Yoko Ono territory. Even so, the evening proved a compelling use of time and a fair return on a £12 ticket, particularly for those who stayed on for the commission presented by fellow resident artist Onyeka Igwe.

Igwe’s contribution centred on a film installation (originally developed for the Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024) accompanied by readings and a choir. No archive can restore this chorus of (diasporic) shame reimagines songs from the Elba Market Women’s Revolt, drawn from the archive of Funmilayo Ransome Kuti and “composed into a new song cycle” by artist and musician Tanya Auclair. The result was both captivating and deeply affecting.