What Does Power Look Like? is a three part video essay by the artist Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau exploring the way that power appears to us as words, gestures and images. Power is a complex system of relationships and actions, but we think about power in a number of uncomplicated ways. What do these simple expressions of power look like, what purpose do they serve, and who do they benefit?
  
In part one, we explore metaphors: words and image-schemas that structure the abstract concept of power. We take two common metaphors of power - the ladder (as in career ladder) and the chain (as in chain of command) - and through narration, moving image and music, we explore the surface of these metaphors to think about how they look, and why they look the way they do.



Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau creates sculptures, drawings, paintings, performances and videos. His blackly humorous work addresses ugliness, taste, and the ambiguities of language and objects.
  
He is currently undertaking a practice based PhD at Kingston School of Art where his research is looking at power relations and emotional states in performance and video. He is the current artist in residence at Kingsgate Project Space.
  
He was an Open School East Associate in 2014. He founded The Bad Vibes Club, which is a forum for research into negative states, runs Radio Anti with Ross Jardine, and collaborates with Ben Jeans Houghton as the ARKA group. He lives and works in London.

www.dekersaint.com/

The Bad Vibes Club podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-bad-vibes-club/id1220925467

Kingston research page - https://www.kingston.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/research-degree-students/profile/matthew-de-kersaint-giraudeau-437/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/mdkgiraudeau/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/m_dkg


What Does Power Look Like? Part 1: Metaphors

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We see an outstretched arm, fingers searching, grasping for what can be felt but can no longer be described. We hear, through an integrated audio-description, an attempt to put into words not only a physical description of each object, but its full resonance. It begins as a favourite childhood game: a sensory box. A series of objects are turned over, examined, sometimes identifiable and sometimes not. It becomes a grappling with the poignancy and the limitations of memory. This work attempts to put words to sensations which are partial, misremembered, indescribable, hard to forget. How do we hold memory? In our minds? In our hands? And when we’re not holding it where does it reside? In the shape of a handle, the scent of a flower, a particular shade of blue which reminds you of…

Jo Bannon is a UK based artist working in performance, choreography and live art. Her work is concerned with identity, sensory perception, and human encounter and explores how our physical bodies experience the world around us and how this sensory experience can or cannot be conveyed.  Her work is informed by her identity as a disabled woman with albinism and attempts to unpick the ways we look, hear and sense our immediate environment in order to rethink or make unfamiliar these intrinsic human behaviours. 

Bannon's work is led by form and so manifests in various mediums including intimate encounters designed for single or small audiences, staged performance, dance, film and installation.

Jo has presented work in the UK, Europe, South America, USA, China, South Korea and Australia. Jo also works as a dramaturg, educator and writer and is a founder member of artist collective Residence.

Recent work includes Kitchen Alba (2021), Absent Tense (2020), We Are Fucked (2018), Alba (2015), Dead Line (2013) and Exposure (2011).

www.jobannon.co.uk
Twitter: @missjobannon
Vimeo: jobannon

What's in the Box?

As numerous scholars, artists and activists have observed, the function of most commercial facial recognition software is systematically optimized for white, male users.  In this episode, Camille Crichlow explores facial recognition bias through the lens of nineteenth century photography, presenting a historical enquiry into the ways in which contemporary visual technologies reproduce older, anachronistic forms of racialism.  From Francis Galton’s composite portraits to the Zealy Daguerreotypes, the earliest known images of enslaved African Americans, Face & Race offers a visual exploration of nineteenth century visual thinking and surveillance apparatuses through which human bodies were rendered visible and disciplined. Challenging the assumed objectivity of biometric surveillance technologies, this episode considers facial recognition within a larger, historical trajectory of prior and attendant visual practices that are historically embedded in racist and racializing systems of classification.

Camille Crichlow is a writer, researcher and first-year PhD student at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation at University College London. Her research interrogates how the historical and socio-cultural narrative of race manifests in today’s facial recognition and surveillance technologies. Informed by an emergent body of critical scholarship on racialized biases reproduced in machine learning and artificial intelligence, her work aims to connect nineteenth century colonial regimes of biometric racial governance to twenty-first century assumptions through which the black face is rendered both hypervisible and undetectable in contemporary fields of surveillance culture.

Face & Race

In My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex, Cora explores the ways in which her disability (Dwarfism) has informed her experience of drinking down the pub and sex/desire. The video focuses on what Cora sees as the contradictory elements, such as pleasure and danger, involved in these activities and how having a disability can emphasise such contradictions. While offering a very personal take on these topics, Cora also aims to explore why and how the contradictory elements of drinking down the pub and sex/desire have the potential to be felt, to varying degrees, by anyone. My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex, highlights a particular narrative which is largely ignored by wider society - the narrative of a disabled person. It simultaneously explores ways in which all of our particular individual narratives might intertwine. 

Cora Sehgal Cuthbert is a London based multi disciplinary artist. Throughout her practice, she is constantly searching for, and presenting, the extraordinary in the ordinary. Influenced by artists, poets and philosophers like Mark Leckey, William Blake and Iris Murdoch, Cora’s work observes the intersections and connections between the personal, the cultural and a universal humanity/spirituality. She works across several media including photography, sculpture, video and text. While the form of each work may change, the aim remains to explore what we find significant, magical, and extraordinary within the everyday and why.

Cora Sehgal Cuthbert graduated with a BA in Fine Art from City and Guilds of London Art school in 2018 and received the City & Guilds of London Art School Award (part of the Acme Graduate Programme). In 2021, Cora graduated with an MA in Christianity and the Arts from King’s College London. Since then she has been working on various socially engaged art projects.

corasehgalcuthbert.com

Instagram: @coracuthbert

My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex

Google enables us to ask any question, any time. What happens when you try to use to google to understand yourself?  ‘What Does Google Know’ visualises the results of googling a birth defect, revealing uncomfortable and confusing results. Traversing the pages of google the film reveals a distinct hierarchy of whose voices dominate internet discussion. What truth lies in these internet results remains unclear. The never ending information giving an addictive illusion that the answer you seek is just on the next page.

Sorrel Madley's interdisciplinary practice is conceptually focused and continually experimental, specialised in ceramic design and digital media. She transforms her personal fascinations and experiences into work which is relatable and engaging. She previously studied at Design Academy Eindhoven and now runs a studio based in London where she realises both physical and digital projects.

www.sorrelmadley.com

Instagram @sorrel.m

What Does Google Know?

Series 4: Contested Visibilities

What does family mean to you? There are currently 78,000 children in care in the UK, hoping that prospective parents will be able to give them a home.

But adoption is a complicated process, and it is even more so in trans-racial adoption, where white families adopt children of colour. For those children, having a family is often marred by feeling like they don't 'belong' because of their race or their biological culture, and struggles about identity when moving through an (often) racist world that your parents can never understand.

Family means a lot of different things to different people, but adopted children can view themselves as not 'fitting in' in general because they have been adopted – how must it feel for adopted children of colour who can never 'fit in' because their differences are always on their skin. This episode is about belonging, about the difficulties of explaining race and racism to your adopted white parents even though they may never understand, of knowing who your family is but questioning that every time a stranger points out your differences. 

Michele Theil is a freelance journalist based in London. She specialises in investigative journalism, opinion writing, and cultural commentary, with focuses on the LGBTQ+ community, women, race, and their intersections. She has bylines in a number of publications, including VICE, Women's Health Magazine, gal-dem, The Stage, and The Independent. Michele is also a co-host for The Diversitea Podcast, discussing diversity and inclusion within the media, which can be found on Spotify. She is adopted herself and saw this as a passion project for her own experiences of growing up with a white father as a person of colour. 

Her work can be found at micheletheil.com and you can find her tweeting about journalism, Love Island, and Harry Styles on @micheletheil. 

Michele would like to thank her sources for supporting her in this project because without them it wouldn't be possible. She would also like to thank Darrell for lending her a camera when hers decided to die, her podcast co-hosts Sabah and Asyia for their support and her best friend Frances for always being there. This was created in loving memory of her dad, who she believes was the best dad in the world.

Trans-Racial Adoption

A year since Black Lives Matter
And nothing’s changed
Except family became relatives
And I stopped taking the blame...

In this episode Ngaio Anyia examines race as a social construct and questions why and how mixed race people, specifically Black and white mixed race people, disrupt the narrative of race; often presented as a commonly understood experience. Ngaio reflects on what it is to be mixed race through interviews and spoken word, questioning what we think and why as well as creating a space for deeper reflection in an area that tackles the complexity of race, class, belonging and identity.

www.ngaioanyia.com 
Twitter and Facebook: @ngaioanyia
Instagram: @ngaioamusic

The Bridge

Mother Tongue is a project inspired by my own experience of not being able to speak any of the (native/indigenous) languages in Zambia, where I come from. When I was younger, this wasn’t something I thought about, but as I get older, I find myself asking why I don’t speak the languages that my family members do, and what it means for my identity. I found myself not only having these discussions with my family, but mostly with friends who have similar experiences, but come from different cultural backgrounds. 

Through this short animated documentary, I wanted to explore the connection language has to our identity and sense of belonging: the feelings of isolation and disconnect, but also the insight that growing up between and across multiple cultures can bring. I want to paint an image that speaks to an experience shared by many, regardless of language or cultural background. 

 Sam Steele is a production manager and producer based between London and Marseille. She has worked across documentaries and digital projects for Al Jazeera, CNBC and Facebook. Her experience also includes working across feature documentaries and short-films commissioned by BFI. 

 

Sam is one of the co-founders of women-led collective Alternative Fictions that supports filmmakers and visual anthropologists, and curates events/workshops on fairer representation in film and wider social themes. These events have taken place at: London Migration Film Festival, Radical Film Network and Creative Interruptions.  

Her approach to documentary is guided by a strong anthropological and historical research background that informs her ability to work across in a sensitive and ethical way. She is particularly interested in creating works that explore shared experiences across varying culture backgrounds, examining how these similarities permit bonds to be created between individuals. 

www.alternative-fictions.com/
Instagram: @samanthasteel_e

Mother Tongue

Series 3: On Belonging

My baby can do the splits, is this normal? Is dancing a sign of Autism? Is my baby possessed? These are some of the top searches on Google for the word 'baby'.
 
If it takes a village to raise a child, then during lockdown 3.1 million UK households suddenly became ghost towns against their will. With no grandparents, GPs or childrens' services, who do you turn to for advice? My Baby Doesn't Eat/Sleep/Like Me is an insight into the life of one parent, Heather, during her first year as a parent (which happened to coincide with an international pandemic) and how she used Google to cope. The episode explores, through interviews with other new parents, the expectations and advice that are imparted on parents; and how the internet has helped and hindered this during 2020.
 
heatherbandenburg.co.uk // @heather_honeybadger
 
Heather Bandenburg is an early career performance artist, she makes work that celebrates resilience and the absurd in everyday practices. Heather accidentally became a performer due to evangelical obsession with certain subjects, her aim with all her art is to immerse an audience, unexpectedly, into her enthusiasm. Often with powerpoint. For example, since 2011, she went from knowing nothing about wrestling to training and performing on a monthly basis with iucha libre cult, Lucha Britannia; became a leftfield feminist wrestling journalist, and writing a novel Unladylike: A Grrls Guide to Wrestling in 2019. In 2015 she fell in love with Cher, which culminated in to her creating the cabaret show I Need to Cher; later becoming a stage show in 2019/2020 (CPT, The Space). In 2019 she became a parent, so now she makes work about that. This includes My Baby Doesn't.., and includes her 2021 work in progress show, Mummy Vs (Arts Council England, DISRUPT festival), about how being a parent and a wrestler is the same thing.
 
Heather was supported in making this by Rebecca Biscuit (one half of Sh!t Theatre, co-creator of Gig It Up podcast), her oldest friend and long time collaborator on her work. Rebecca fucking loves podcasts and helped edit it together. 


My Baby Doesn't Eat/Sleep/Like Me

What Does Power Look Like? is a three part video essay by the artist Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau exploring the way that power appears to us as words, gestures and images. Power is a complex system of relationships and actions, but we think about power in a number of uncomplicated ways. What do these simple expressions of power look like, what purpose do they serve, and who do they benefit?

In part two, we explore gestures: bodily forms of communication that express themselves without using words. We focus on the handshake as a temporary gesture of equality that can also be used to express dominance or perform submission. We ask whether the jerky handshake of former U.S President Donald Trump is a power grab or a failed embrace of the other, and through re-performance, we try to understand the power relations embodied in the ritual handshake of the American cult, NXIVM.

Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau creates sculptures, drawings, paintings, performances and videos. His blackly humorous work addresses ugliness, taste, and the ambiguities of language and objects.

He is currently undertaking a practice based PhD at Kingston School of Art where his research is looking at power relations and emotional states in performance and video. He is the current artist in residence at Kingsgate Project Space.

He was an Open School East Associate in 2014. He founded The Bad Vibes Club, which is a forum for research into negative states, runs Radio Anti with Ross Jardine, and collaborates with Ben Jeans Houghton as the ARKA group. He lives and works in London.

Credits:
Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau

Performers:
Hamish MacPherson
Mil Vukovic-Smart

What Does Power Look Like? Part 2: Gestures

Series 2: Toolkits

#### TEASER TRAILER

<video width="100%" src="https://media.graphcms.com/NuOzurYSTmOgUjsAJ8x7" poster="https://media.graphcms.com/output=format:jpg/92nBx8VQJmUBQWbUGFS7" />

#### Trailer made by Claire Nolan

ALL THE PEOPLE I HURT WITH MY WEDDING is a film that documents stories and anecdotes from weddings that are painful, awkward, lonely or difficult. The narrative begins somewhere in the early ‘80s and takes us to the close of 2019, exploring the collusion of the wedding industry with patriarchy, the performance of both emotional and capitalist joy, the emergence of queer weddings, and the weight of families and tradition and the state. Using a mixture of still images and home video footage, underscored by a voiceover that merges fact with fiction, the film creates an associative, dreamlike and sometimes ironic meditation on the institution of marriage and its undertows of sadness.  

Lara Haworth is a visual artist and a writer. She lives in London.
 
Her work has shown at places including Koganecho Bazaar, Yokohama, Japan; Library of Birmingham, UK; Begehungen No 10, Chemnitz, Germany; Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto, Canada; Festival Belluard Bollwerk, Fribourg, Switzerland; and Atrium Gallery, London. 
 
Her debut novel, THE STRAITS, is represented by Jo Bell at Bell Lomax Moreton. 
 
Lara is currently on a residency in Lisbon developing a new work for Arroz Estudios, in collaboration with The Fandangoe Kid.
 
Jacek Zmarz is a Polish filmmaker from London. He dropped A-level art aged 16 because he couldn’t work with the head of department. Primarily working in music videos, his work is inspired by Patrick Keiller, Roy Andersson and your old home movies. His work has been featured by The Guardian, Clash magazine, Mercury Prize -- Recommends and The Design Museum.
 
Credits
Written, directed, and narrated by Lara Haworth.
Edited by Jacek Zmarz.
Produced by Louis Harris-White.
Illustration and design by Annie Nicholson. 
Music by Rom Boyd.
All footage and stills used licenced under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC by 4.0).
Special thanks to Ilya Parkins and Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice in Guelph, Canada for supporting the beginnings of this project.

[www.larahaworth.com](https://www.larahaworth.com/)

[www.jacekzmarz.com](http://jacekzmarz.com/)



ALL THE PEOPLE I HURT WITH MY WEDDING

A year ago nnull found themself at a difficult crossroad when their UK visa was due to expire. They had to choose between migrating economically and seeking asylum. Each route would ultimately determine the possession of extremely different rights. nnull unpacks the disparity in rights we possess and acquire through immigration and how this is ultimately tied to capital. They reflect on how their situation reveals contradictions in the narratives that surround the European Migration Crisis. A Monster Outside of Human draws from the works of Hannah Arendt as a stateless person who contemplates on the bigger picture of personal events after gaining status. 


nnull (they/them, he/him) is an artist, researcher and educator based in London. Though they would like to remain anonymous, they cannot help but unpack their identity in their work. nnull is currently transitioning in many ways (between genders, and citizenships for example). Their work operates as part diary of personal experiences and an interrogation of broader politics and histories that intersect with their identity. Their research interests include human rights, immigration and citizenship, post-colonialism and intergenerational trauma and bureaucracy. They hope to affirm the experiences of those who face inequality and to promote a more equitable world. 


Full credits for all contributors:
Director, Writer and Animator - nnull
Research Assistant and Artist - Lia A. O. Durda
Editorial Support - Pippa Marshall
Voice Actors
Immigration Advisor - Pippa Marshall
Lawyer - Chloe Salter


A Monster Outside of Human Laws

This is first in an attempt at vocalising & bringing together voices which have been affected by the hostile environment policies currently practiced in the UK. Hostile Environment as a catchphrase began during Theresa May’s cabinet in 2012 as she voiced in a Telegraph interview of her desire in creating a “really hostile environment” for migrants in the UK. This evolved since 2012 making its way into our politics, policies and everyday way of life. Some of its manifestations are discussed in this work including the NHS Health Surcharge that is a tax on top of National Insurance that is levied on those without a British passport. However, you’ll find that the underpinnings & desire to effect change under the hostile environment policies seek to create a terror-like circumstances in all aspects of [im]migrant’s lives.

This work has been created by Bhavani Esapathi [[@bhaesa](www.twitter.com/bhaesa)], a maker, writer & social-tech activist working on the intersections of social exclusion, migrant’s rights, access to healthcare and seeking justice for those living with invisible disabilities. Her work has been featured in London Design Festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival and in WIRED Magazine from winning the WIRED Creative Hack Award for socially innovative idea in Tokyo, Japan. Currently she is Artist-in-Residence under Cost of Innovation programme at Invisible Flock and Recipient of the ACE-DYCP Award [2021-2022]. She & her partner Dr. Martin Mangler [[@mangler_m](www.twitter.com/mangler_m)], Volcanologist, Science Communicator and Post-Doctoral Research Associate recount and unpick the variety of ways hostile environment has changed their lives & continues to have an impact on them as individuals and as a couple together.

You can find out more about the artist by visiting her website [[bhavaniesapathi.com](www.bhavaniesapathi.com)] to participate in her social projects.

Don't Google It

Series 4: Contested Visibilities

What's in the Box?

Face & Race

My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex

What Does Google Know?

Series 3: On Belonging

Trans-Racial Adoption

The Bridge

Mother Tongue

Series 2: Toolkits

My Baby Doesn't Eat/Sleep/Like Me

What Does Power Look Like? Part 2: Gestures

Series 1: Institutions

::::::::

TEASER TRAILER

Trailer made by Claire Nolan

::::::::

ALL THE PEOPLE I HURT WITH MY WEDDING

A Monster Outside of Human Laws

What Does Power Look Like? Part 1: Metaphors

FAQ: Immigrants & Media [A Conversation]

What Does Power Look Like? Part 1: Metaphors

Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau

.css-o7zh22{box-sizing:border-box;margin:0;min-width:0;color:var(--theme-ui-colors-primary,#cf2e2e);}.css-o7zh22:hover{color:var(--theme-ui-colors-secondary,#de3576);}Don't Google It

Series 4: Contested Visibilities

What's in the Box?

Face & Race

My Life and Yours, Birth, Beer and Sex

What Does Google Know?

Series 3: On Belonging

Trans-Racial Adoption

The Bridge

Mother Tongue

Series 2: Toolkits

My Baby Doesn't Eat/Sleep/Like Me

What Does Power Look Like? Part 2: Gestures

Series 1: Institutions

::::::::

TEASER TRAILER

Trailer made by Claire Nolan

::::::::

ALL THE PEOPLE I HURT WITH MY WEDDING

A Monster Outside of Human Laws

What Does Power Look Like? Part 1: Metaphors

FAQ: Immigrants & Media [A Conversation]

What Does Power Look Like? Part 1: Metaphors

Matthew de Kersaint Giraudeau

Don't Google It