At Open School East, Henry Babbage collaboratively produced a project with Louis-Jack Horton-Stephens titled Gates of Rome, a video and multimedia installation that reflects on the role of creative production in expressing “radical” views at a time when they proliferate alongside brand sensibilities. Modelled on research conducted into thinktanks, photographs of hand gestures associated with counter-cultural political movements comprise a set of stock images for a range of potential requirements. At the centre of the installation, a video demonstrates a specific treatment of the gesticulating hands that places them within the fraught collectivity and individualism of nightclub environments. The actions are framed by an interior stream of thought and branded recollections and an evocative rumbling soundtrack.

For the public programming at OSE, Henry contributed to the group Speculative Tours, with Emil Scheffmann, Theo Shields, Louis-Jack Horton-Stephens, Ellie Davies and Alex Ressel, organising lecture-events that engaged with explorative approaches to knowledge sharing — discursive exchanges in which invited speakers are situated in relation to sites of concern or interest. For one particular event, Henry invited Adam Broomberg and Dave Turley to facilitate an afternoon of mudlarking on the bank of the Thames to think through archaeology’s relation to art praxis.