Performance Day: Ruth Jones, Caroline Sinders and Louise Ashcroft

An afternoon of performance as part of the exhibition Compulsory Continuous Connectedness: Rest in a Networked World. Through performance and storytelling, Ruth Jones, Caroline Sinders and Louise Ashcroft look at care, rest and reflection within the context of our networked world. Moving between considerations around gendered labour, the brain's default mode network and the afterlife of our digital footprint, these works invite reflection about alternative ways of being outside constant connectivity. There will be time to speak to the artists and see the exhibition before and after the performances.

Schedule:

2pm: Ruth Jones, The Maintenance and The Build, 2025, approx. 20 minutes (both works) Ruth Jones seeks to create spaces where the peculiar circumstances of women's and marginalised genders' lived experiences can be held together in tension and afforded a sense of care. Shifting between the banal, reproductive labour of keeping a world going, and the sensory barrage of mesmeric whispered vocals, the audience is invited to consider the expectations of gendered, caring roles and who gets to imagine the world anew.

2.40pm: Caroline Sinders, Activating the default modes, 2026, approx. 20 minutes In this site-specific performance, artist and co-curator Caroline Sinders will guide the audience through an experience to activate the brain's default mode networks. By engaging with the space in Gallery 2, their newly commissioned works, participants will be led through a series of prompts to encourage reflection, technology disconnection and daydreaming. Default mode networks are a series of neural connections said to be active during wakeful rest, such as times of daydreaming and mind wandering. These neural connections are essential for our brain to produce creativity and reflection, but our continuously 'plugged in' lives leave little space to achieve these particular neural states.

3.15pm: Louise Ashcroft, Real Slop, 2026, approx. 30 minutes Louise Ashcroft performs a new series of darkly funny short stories and images, which use their own digital footprint of past Instagram posts as prompts, transforming and mutating old 'content' into fresh cognitive contortions, during a self-imposed six-month social media ban.