The Bluecoat launches new season celebrating ‘written and spoken word’

The Bluecoat is kicking off 2025 with a season that shines a spotlight on the power of language.

The new programme, But Does it Speak?, begins on Tuesday, 21 January, and offers a mix of screenings, workshops, and events featuring artists and writers who use poetry, fiction, and speech to reimagine visual worlds.

For the first part of the season, the Bluecoat’s gallery will screen three films by artists Jennifer Lee Tsai, Farah Al Qasimi, and Abi Palmer. 

The first film in the gallery will be Fallen Star, written and narrated by Jennifer Lee Tsai, who is currently in residence at the Bluecoat as part of the Wittenham Bursary. Fallen Star is a tender film about connecting and holding ancestral bodies.

Originally commissioned and directed by Tmesis Theatre, as part of a collaborative project entitled ‘Lone Women’ with First Take, the film combines Lee Tsai’s poetry with dance performed by Pei Yee Tong and music by Meike Holzmann.

This combination of choreography and poetry creates moments in which the spoken word seems to compel the performer to move, and in turn, the performance seems to amplify and draw out Lee Tsai’s words. 

Fallen Star, written and read by Jennifer Lee Tsai. Performed by Pei Yee Tong. Directed by Elinor Randle. Composer Meike Holzmann. Filmed & edited by First Take

Fallen Star will be screened in the Bluecoat gallery from Tuesday 21 January – Sunday 2 February. 

Following on from Lee Tsai, the Bluecoat will screen Farah Al Qasimi’s Everybody was Invited to a Party, which takes inspiration from ‘Iftah Ya Simsim’, a 1980s Arabic version of Sesame Street, and borrows text from translation books found in London.

The film features hand-sewn puppets, voiced by the artist, and captures moments where language falters and breaks down, but in doing so opens up new avenues of meaning.

The slippages in language, mispronunciations and awkward translations build a world of melancholy and humour. Everybody was Invited to a Party also features music composed and performed by Al Qasimi.

Everybody was Invited to a Party will be screened in the Bluecoat gallery from Tuesday 11th to Sunday 23rd February 

The final screening of the season will be Abi Palmer’s Slime Mother.

The film combines spoken word with languorous panning shots of slugs sliding, twisting and suspending from branches. A narrator’s voice guides us through a ‘slug-god world’, recounting memories of a childhood spent hating slugs, pouring salt and flicking them away, to a new perspective of worship, love and coexistence.

Palmer’s words, combined with beautifully composed film work, transforms the slug from a hated body into the divine.  

Slime Mother will be screened in the Bluecoat gallery from Tuesday 4 – Sunday 16 March.

Alongside film screenings and exhibitions in the gallery, the Bluecoat’s But Does it Speak? will include a unique opportunity to physically explore items from the Bluecoat’s vast archive along with new displays, live music events, talks, workshops and more. 

Visit the Bluecoat website for more information on But Does it Speak? over the coming weeks. 

For the latest news in Liverpool click here.