Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Lou Lou Sainsbury

descending notes

Fiction expérimentale | 4k | couleur | 18:6 | Royaume-Uni | 2022

descending notes (2022) is an erotic science-fiction film that explores transness as a form of dissonance and resonance. It takes inspiration from Donny Hathaway’s heartfelt rendition of A Song for You, whose lyrics are punctuated by a discordant progression of piano notes: “If my words don’t come together, listen to the melody ‘cause my love is in there hiding… I love you in a place where there's no space or time.” Written and performed with Ada M. Patterson and Raffia Li, the film is a cosmic love story between three transing beings whose desire unfolds across time and space, from the sensuality of early Christian sainthoods to future alien intimacies. Grounded in autobiographical experiences of tenderness, solidarity and grief within transgender friendships and everyday life; as the world splits apart, these undercover beings covertly learn to live in transformation and to give each other breath.

Lou Lou Sainsbury is a transfeminine artist based between Rotterdam, NL and Margate, UK, working across film, live-performance, poetry, installation and textiles. She identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into tricksterish dreamscapes, exploring identity, community and ecological entanglement. She often works in collaboration, developing intimate long term projects guided by improvisation, cinematic processes and sonic thinking. Lou Lou’s work questions how we can become better listeners and how bodies can trouble history and geography. Moving across a poetics of sensual communion, her transformative work seeks to imagine stories for more liberated futures. After graduating from her MA in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute (2021), Lou Lou was recipient of the Freelands Gasworks Partnership Programme. She was an associate artist at Open School East (2017), after completing her BA in Moving Image at the University of Brighton (2016). Her recent solo exhibitions include Roodkapje, Rotterdam (2023); Humber Street Gallery, Hull; Gasworks, London (2022) and Well Projects, Margate (2020). Recent performances and group presentations include: International Film Festival Rotterdam (2023); Whitstable Biennale (2022); Centre for Contemporary Arts, Prague (2021); La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2020), Tate Modern, London; Nottingham Contemporary and Yaby, Madrid (2019).