During their time at Open School East, Lou Lou Sainsbury explored different forms of text-to-image relationships in the context of queer subjectivities, disarming power and fictive experiences of the body. Using reading groups, writing and found video footage throughout the year, Lou Lou developed collaborative writing and workshops, for example the workshop ‘The Well of Many Worlds’ with George Harding, where participants were invited to explore their own fantastical bodies and the worlds which shaped them.

During the second half of the year, Lou Lou focused on mythology and animal symbology as a tool to disarm systems of power, autocolonisation, self-hunt and systemic violence. Specifically looking at the body of the ‘Chimera’ during their research project ‘Feeling for Chimeras’, Lou Lou used writing and different modes of address to explore the ways images can be unpacked by text and the voice. Lou Lou finished the year with the performative lecture ‘Pre-Chimera Time’, retelling a personal linguistic future-history of the sacred and the visible.

Lou Lou also curated two events of ‘Synthetic Ecology’ across the year in Brighton, with the second iteration in the form of a camping residency and moving image & workshop festival, collaborating with OSE associates Kris Lock, George Harding and Josephine Sweeney. Moving forward Lou Lou will be setting up a project space along with fellow alumni Emily Whitebread, George Harding, Chloe Ashley and Kris Lock, based in Margate.