Collaborated with Timothy George Kelly on his mix for NTS celebrating his new short film FEUERWERK — a short documentary about Berlin, New Year’s Eve, and catharsis.
Author: dylan
Fam Jam is a performance by Dylan Spencer-Davidson and Joy Mariama Smith examining relationality beyond traditional constructs of “family.” The work was premiered in the Kantine at Sophiensaele, Berlin in December 2025 as part of Queer Family Album, where it took the form of a performance in three parts: a three-channel video installation projected onto textiles, a series of wearable T-shirt artworks, and a participatory line-dance with the audience.
A 17-minute video collages material from personal and public archives—56a Infoshop (London), the Feminist Library (London), and Archivo de la Memoria Trans (Buenos Aires) among others — grassroots, queer, feminist, and trans archives built through mutual aid and collective stewardship. The images depict a range of kinship constellations, working through the messiness of “family”—the protections it affords, the harms it enables, the lines it creates and how they might be redrawn. Starting from the premise of family abolition, the work moves through kinship, intimacy, and connection, attempting—and failing—to create a real-time, decolonial, anti-capitalist space for alternative forms of relation.
The soundtrack layers samples, field recordings, and original compositions—drawing on sources including “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” Lebanese lullaby “Yalla Tenam Reema”, and the piano riff from Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend”—tracing a sonic line through orphanhood, displacement, and the ongoing work of inventing kinship otherwise.
The digital publication Echoes Under the Pillow by Yen Chun Lin was created after the installation and sleepover-performances Here, a nut falls twice at ICA London in 2022. Artists, writers, and performers were invited to create a piece of writing in response to the performance. Including text contributions by those who were part of the collective falling and dreaming:
Lithic Alliance
Jared Davis
Marijn Degenaar
Lou Drago
Cee Füllemann
Yen Chun Lin
Louis Mason
Sara Sassanelli
oxi peng
Felix Riemann a.k.a leslie
Berglind Thrastardóttir
Matilda Tjäder
Web design: Marijn Degenaar
Editorial support: Dylan Spencer-Davidson
https://www.here-falls-twice.com/https://www.here-falls-twice.com
It took a lot longer than expected, but HONEY Volume 2 is now out in the world!
HONEY is a zine meditating on the experiences of friendship. Volume 2 was edited by Mars Dietz, Opashona Ghosh and Dylan Spencer-Davidson—each of us inviting contributions from friends.
The issue features incredible contributions by Pelumi Adejumo, D Mortimer, Clay AD, Ana Božičević, Azul De Monte, Adriana Disman, Iggy Robinson, To Doan, Edward Herring, marum, Lou Drago, Aisha Mirza, Iga Świeściak, Roya Amirsoleymani, George Lynch, Emily Pope and Kari Rosenfeld.
Riso-printed by Pagemasters in Black, (+ Violet and Metallic Gold on the cover) on Context Natural papers.
Stockists:
rile*, Brussels
Perdu, Amsterdam
Good Press, Glasgow
Books, London
Common Press, London
56a Info Shop, London
…and online
Launch
Casino for Social Medicine, 18th January 2025
Readings by
Azul De Monte, Edward Herring, Iga Śśćk (peformance with row särkelä, kulshedra, rio & noia), To Doan, marum, Lou Drago, D Mortimer and Kari Rosenfeld
Screening
Sarnt Utamachote’s I don’t want to be just a memory.
Food & drink
Chinese food fundraiser for H48. Plus special one-night-only friendship-inspired goldenrod cocktail. Recipe by Jasmine Phillips, herbs foraged by Florence Freitag.
In 2023 Joy Mariama Smith and I started collaborating, researching intimacy and friendship practices. We shared some first work from this collaboration at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on Aug 24th and Sep 1st 2023.
This circle, brought together by artist and educator Joy Mariama Smith, explores, together with many others, intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. What is intimacy and how do we experience it amidst vastness? This is the ongoing research question of this circle, calibrating intimacies.
Imbedded in the research practice of the common or commoning of uncertainties around expressions of intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. The performers will use the Oude Kerk as the primary site for these explorations. Approaching research on intimacy from a multi-modal place to align with the multiple uses of the O.K. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. Our method and reason for coming together is to research collectively via discourse, vocalization and movement. The yield of the research is understanding the reciprocal relationship between the sacred and the intimate.
The public manifestation is an invitation to witness/support/immerse/engage with our research. We will do movement and vocal research around the collective space of safety/sacred/sanctuary. We will dance with each other and through each other, we will improvise and choreograph. We will speak without talking, we will make nonsense out of sense making. We will vocalize without being verbal.
I use dance here in the literal, and expansive sense, as well as senses that have yet to be revealed. The dance of relation. Human and non-human, space and body, time and space, person to person.
The next circle meeting in this series will take place on Sept 1st. Please bring your own headphones in order to listen to the audio recording.
Collaborators/Cohort/Circle
Eroca Nicols (sept 1st)
Paca faraus (sept 1st)
Philipp Meyer-Hege (aug 26th)
Mijke van der Drift & Jay Bernard (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Joy Mariama Smith (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Justin F Kennedy (aug 26th)
Dylan Spencer-Davidson (aug 26th & sept 1st)
Ciro Goudsmit (sept 1st)
Laura Fernandez Antolin
Alyssa Reiziger.
For more information about It’s OK… look here.
Field of Study is an experimental, residential study week which took place in July 2023 for eleven participants at The Mirror Institution in Öland, Sweden. The project was initiated by Opashona Ghosh, Emmeli Person, Liza Rinkema Rapuš, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Mirjam Steffen and Iga Świeściak.
The programme’s focus was on de-individualizing artistic practice through peer learning methodologies. It sought to move away from competitive and extractivist modes of artistic study and production. Instead, the programme researched models that create space for artists to share resources. The week included peer-led workshops engaging with improvisational scores, social dreaming, mobilizing theory, documentation practices and labor extraction in the art world. Additionally it hosted screenings of works by Ane Hjort Guttu and Agus Nur Amal PM TOH.
Field of Study was realised with the generous support of Gwaertler Stiftung.
Delighted to have my work featured on the cover of issue 133 of the German contemporary music magazine Positionen. The magazine features documentation from Affective Dynamics Study Group, Age of Majority as well as work in progress. Designed by the wonderful Studio Pandan.
Affective Dynamics Study Group is a video showing a temporary collective exploring issues around interpersonal relations, non-violent communication, vulnerability, complicity and new ways of being and living together. Part consciousness-raising group, part experiential group, the collective meets to perform a series of experimental exercises together, borrowed from the fields of somatics, activism and group therapy. The video’s subtitles are based on interviews with the participants.
Commissioned by Roter Salon, Volksbühne Berlin for NEXT WAVES THEATER/Glasshouse
Screenings
Volksbühne (online), 2021
Next Waves Theater/Glasshouse (online), 2021
XXL Dreams, The Hague, 2023
Viewing Copy, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2024
Born into a dying future, today’s preadolescents are the first representatives of Generation Alpha – a generation likely to be faced with immense global challenges in their lifetime. Too young to be afforded a democratic voice, but born too late to wait around, many of them are starting to take direct action around the world.
Age of majority is choreographic performance by Dylan Spencer-Davidson, developed collaboratively with Dora (11), Effie (11), Ella Belle (11), Josephine (11), Maida (12), Mila (12), Jordan (10), Sidonie (11), and Deva Schubert. By consciously occupying public space and subtly disrupting social codes, the performers adopt »subject rebel positions« and test ideas around autonomy, self-esteem, identity formation, performativity and resistance.
Premiered at Tropez, Berlin