For this episode artist Yuli Serfaty shares their new work, ‘Picnic Zone’ with Future Artefacts FM. Introduced by the voice of Golem, a character from Jewish folklore, this 15 minute soundscape presents an alternate present where surveillance technology has mutated with the Yatir Forest. Set at the edge of the Israeli desert and the West Bank, together we discuss Serfaty’s current speculative research; how the desert’s inhabitants have affected the military architecture within this monocultural forest, the ‘safety’ of picnic zones in an altered Israel and a need for amorphic beings.

Yuli Serfaty (1992, Israel) is a London based multimedia artist researching natural landscapes in relation to local and global politics. Serfaty uses Speculative Fiction methodologies in order to World-build installations in textual, sonic, digital, and physical forms. Serfaty’s approach is an open-ended ecology in which each element exists in relation; more-than-human webs where landscapes are protagonists, making space for alternative power structures in which the marginalised, the unimportant and the overlooked take central stage.

Serfaty exhibited both nationally and internationally with selected exhibitions including: Cosmoses, Xxijra Hii, London (2022), London Grads Now.21, Saatchi Gallery, London (2021), Spazio Volta, ArtVerona 16, Verona (2021), Seam, Strata, Seance, Collective Ending, London (2021), and has featured work at DOCUMENTARY: Who Speaks for a Space?, London Short Film Festival, 2021. In 2021 Serfaty had a solo show at Arad Contemporary Art Centre after being an Artist in Residence for two consecutive years. Serfaty has been the June 2021 Artist in Residence at Gazelli Art House, London, and they are a recipient of the 2021 Sarabande Emerging Artist Award, as well as the 2021 Slade Prize.

Artist: Yuli Serfaty

Hosts: Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Music: Joe Moss and John Trevaskis

Producer: Flo Lines

Broadcast through Radio Thamesmead