Ambre Panhard

O.T.O (One Time Only) was a club night that took place at FOLD in London, in partnership with the moving image gallery LUX, on the 11th of May 2023 from 7pm to 1am. It presented new and existing work by leading contemporary artists and DJs responding to their relationship with music videos. Using music, performance and video, the artists and contributors to O.T.O brought out the ways in which music videos have impacted them, art and society.

In our research we found that music videos hadn’t been given a clear space in our culture, sitting between the worlds of film, art and music so we envisaged a night that sits between a screening, an exhibition and a night out. This was an opportunity to consider our relationship to the music video format in a more embodied way. We understood how universal the experience of watching music videos is, the individual belonging within a wider fan culture, and their ability to serve as a historical memory. With O.T.O, we invited the public to watch, dance and listen to music videos together on the dancefloor. 

The first set included the live VJ and DJ works of London-based artists Anna Clegg and Tarzan KingOfTheJungle, the second set presented a video work by artist Ahaad Alamoudi accompanied by the DJ HabibTati and featuring a gorilla performance, the final set presented artist Adam Farah-Saad existing moving image work initiating a conversation with the DJ Hellikisito’s set. As transitions between the sets, we screened David Hall’s ‘TV Interruptions 93’ commissioned by MTV Networks, these intended to disrupt the night and highlight music videos’ mediums of distribution. 

In preparation of the night, Hugo Hutchins and Maria Mahfooz created site-specific digital commissions for social media, which were made available on the LUX Instagram account. 

An accompanying digital publication, featuring texts by the curators and a foreword by Lewis G. Burton was available on the O.T.O website. Topics include responses to the music videos of Gwen Stefani, how K-pop fan culture has challenged gender norms in China and interviews with practitioners using the party as an art form. My contribution was an interview with the collective 16am.

Read more about O.T.O here. 

My practice is rooted in the social value of art and curation. My interests are at the crossing of environmental humanities, intersectional feminism, queer theory, deep medicine and healthcare which I see as mutually enriching. I recognise the potential of art and culture to create spaces and opportunities to be experimental and take risks in relation to wider socio-political issues. I am interested in collaborative art practices and alternative learning methodologies. I find employing multinarrativity, collective intelligence and games to be useful to explore the complexity of contemporary issues. Anchored in principles of cooperation and interdisciplinarity, my practice is a form of expanded activism where I also look for new ways of understanding and creating ‘value’. 

My academic work is focused on the interactions of contemporary curatorial practices and health. With a background in arts and sciences, I have developed a holistic understanding of human health. In my graduate dissertation, I looked at how connections between art interventions, community work, and scientific knowing can contribute to transforming the politics, ethics, and narratives of healthcare. I was interested in the potential of art and curation to ‘unlearn’ healthcare institutions and adopt a more agile model of radical care. My research on art in mental health hospitals showed that in fact most radical art and curation happens outside of clinical spaces. I articulated how the curatorial could enable us to create new narratives in health that shape reality, and allow us to become makers and users of our own future.

I also have a dance practice where I explore these themes in a more embodied way. Improvisation dance has been for me a method to learn from the body both individually and collectively, and explore knowledge sensorially. In March 2023, I have facilitated a workshop with The Feminist Library exploring aspects of cooperation through improvisation dance.