Speaking Futures with Diasporas Now
Sounding Futures
at Institute of Contemporary Arts
9 July, 2025
Sounding Futures is the first live collaborative performance by Diasporas Now co-founders, RIEKO, Lulu Wang, and Paola Estrella. For this event they are joined by special guest artists Joshua Woolford, Furmaan Ahmed, and Abi Asisa.
Through experimental music, movement, set design and spoken word – featuring live looping, effects processors and gestural repetition – the evening explored ritual as a form of resistance and renewal. It culminated in a collective finale featuring set design by Furmaan Ahmed and a live cello score by Abi Asisa.
This multimedia performance reimagined what 'diaspora' means today. Drawing on ancestral knowledge from Asian, Latinx and Afro-Caribbean lineages, it envisioned a diasporic futurism rooted in interconnectedness, embodied animism and non-linear time.
The evening concluded with a panel discussion about the future of live art and the expanding praxis of Diasporas Now.
Presented as part of their yearlong residency at the ICA, this event is the live instalment of the Speaking Futures x Diasporas Now, a year-long cross-cultural public programme led by the collective-in-residence Diasporas Now at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, including live performances, panel talks, practice sharing, workshops and more. The programme is in partnership with AnOther Magazine.
Sounding Futures is curated by Diasporas Now Co-Founders RIEKO and Lulu Wang with curator Hanna Geddes.
Image courtesy of Diasporas Now, photographed by Furmaan Ahmed
About Artists
RIEKO
RIEKO is a Japanese-born artist and composer whose multidisciplinary practice is part of an ongoing mythological world-building project. Weaving ritual performance, experimental music, and collective healing workshops with curation and community building, her work prototypes alternative futures and cultural systems through oracular, artist-led intuition.
Lulu Wang
Lulu Wang is a Chinese interdisciplinary artist drawing inspiration from her heritage and digital subcultures to explore hybrid identities and connections across humanity and social relationships. Through sculpture making, installation, and immersive choreography, her practice revolves around visual work in collaboration with technology, fashion, and music.
Paola Estrella
Paola Estrella is a Mexican multimedia artist whose work spans painting, video, installation, performance, and new technologies. Through speculative fiction, she explores how imagination shapes identity, social norms, and personal experience. Her practice examines the tension between belief, perception, and transcendence.
Joshua Woolford
Joshua Woolford is a transdisciplinary artist working between performance, painting, sculpture, sound, video, and installation. Their work is rooted in cultural research, drawing from literature, music, and art, as well as their own personal experiences of being a member of the queer Black Afro-Caribbean diaspora living in England. Alongside their artistic practice, Joshua takes on design commissions and lectures at both UAL (London College of Communication) and the Royal College of Art (School of Architecture).
Furmaan Ahmed
Furmaan Ahmed is a Glasgow-born, Pakistani-Scottish multidisciplinary image-maker and set designer known for their visionary, mythological world-building across contemporary art, fashion, and experimental music. Blending ancient symbolism with futuristic sensuality, Furmaan crafts immersive visual universes that centre trans, queer, and Global Majority experiences. Their aesthetic – ethereal, cinematic, and deeply embodied – has become sought after by leading clients and collaborators including Tate, Sadler Wells, Hermes, Prada, Nike, and more. A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Furmaan was named a trailblazer in Dazed Middle East's 2024 '100 List' and received the British Fashion Council’s New Wave Creative Award in 2021.
Abi Asisa
Abi Asisa is a producer and electro-acoustic cellist whose work blends classical, jazz, and experimental influences. Originally from Brighton, she moved to London aged nineteen, where she shifted from traditional cello performance to more improvisational, genre-fluid music. She layers and manipulates her cello to create textured, emotionally rich soundscapes. A member of the multidisciplinary collective Life is Beautiful, Asisa frequently collaborates across music, dance, and visual art. She has performed at venues such as Cafe Oto, Southbank Centre, and Tate, and was a 2024 resident artist at the Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation.