Diasporas Now x BULLYACHE
at Institute of Contemporary Arts
11 December 2025
Our Speaking Futures x Diasporas Now programme wrapped up the year with a high-energy performance-making workshop led by avant-garde interdisciplinary collective BULLYACHE (@bullyache_).
Participants were invited into their world of club sonics, cross-media influences and choreography shaped by queer and working-class perspectives. Through improvisation, collage and choreographic scoring, the workshop explored the body as a site of cultural memory, resistance and joy, ending with a shared reflection and collective exchange.
The evening culminated in an intimate conversation with BULLYACHE core members Courtney Deyn (@courtney_my_real_name) and Jacob Samuel (@jacobfsamuel), chaired by writer and Serpentine Live Programmes curator Kostas Stasinopoulos (@kostasstas). The talk opened up their creative process and the hybrid performance language that defines their work.
Speaking Futures x Diasporas Now is a year-long cross-cultural programme at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (@icalondon), led by collective-in-residence Diasporas Now, featuring performances, talks and workshops.
About Panels
BULLYACHE
BULLYACHE is an artist duo founded in 2021 by Courtney Deyn and Jacob Samuel. They make live music videos for the stage: choreographing, directing, and composing original works that merge music, avant-garde dance theatre, and pop culture spectacle. Think Pina Bausch cosplaying as Dua Lipa—ballroom meets noise, exhaustive dance training meets media theory—distilled into radical, cutting-edge choreographic performance.
BULLYACHE have created two previous full-length works, TOM and Who Hurt You?, both of which have toured and sold out internationally. Their third work, A Good Man is Hard to Find, had its world premiere at the Venice Biennale Danza. As the Guardian puts it: “Like live music videos crossed with avant-garde dance theatre.”
They have collaborated with institutions including the Venice Biennale, Jerwood, and Sound and Music, engaging hundreds of marginalised artists through panels, discussions, workshops, and residencies. Recent residencies include the Barbican, Studio Wayne McGregor, and Britten Pears. They have also created performances for Warp Records and Paris Fashion Week.
Kostas Stasinopoulos
Kostas Stasinopoulos is a curator and writer. He is Curator, Live Programmes at Serpentine, London, looking after the institution’s interdisciplinary programme. He has served as Associate Curator at The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center and has collaborated with the Whitechapel Gallery, White Cube, Frieze, Loop, Sadler’s Wells and the Athens Biennale among others. Kostas received his PhD in History of Art from University of York (2016), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Onassis Foundation and NEON. He holds an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art (2010), MA in Cultural and Creative Industries from King’s College (2009) and BSc in Biochemistry with Management from Imperial College London (2007). His research and writing has appeared in numerous symposia and international publications and together with Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, he is the co-editor of 140 Artists’ Ideas for Planet Earth (Penguin, 2021).