VIDEO SALON INTERNATIONAL PRESENTS:
TRANSCENDENCE
Spanners, London
July 2026
The first iteration of Video Salon International (VSI), “Transcendence,” is a night of moving image, performance, and sound.
The first iteration of VSI, “Transcendence,” emphasizes the materiality of image and a physical sense of looking. It comes out of the flickering passages of heightened feeling, of a body in place, of radiance, or salvation, of the abstraction of light, of forming forms, of neurosis and solitude.
Transcendence, as highlighted by this programme, does not descend from a greater external force. It comes from images, be it Caravaggio’s “David with the Head of Goliath”or Paolo Uccello’s “The Battle of San Romano.” It comes from bodies sharing a room, mediated through signals, movements, and sounds.
Drawing references from Western spiritual and theological traditions across various geographies, the artists conjure transhistorical translation, weaving together personal history, counterculture, and somatic knowledge.
They invite the question: how do we transcend our ways of being together, both intimately and collectively, and onto other possibilities of time?
PROGRAMME
- Introduction by VSI Founder and Curator Fiona Ye
- Fiontan Moran, Standhal, 20mins, Performance
- Mark Leckey, Carry Me into the Wilderness, 2022, 6mins, Screening
- Umi Ishihara, Gravity and Radiance, 2022, 30mins, Screening
- Mark Leckey, Batter My ❤️, Three-personed G0D, Lecture
- Yuri Umemoto, Concerts, 2026, Haru Ogiwara (cello) and Ignacy Stefanowicz (violin), Live
Photography by Bart Seng Wen Long
Videography by Joshua Humphery
Visual Design by Matthew Toups