Abbas Zahedi, SONIC SUPPORT: ECO (The Extracorporeal Orchestra) performance

Artists Abbas Zahedi and Tom Harris will initiate a live performance as part of a series of evolving ensembles, bringing together artists, musicians and collaborators to explore experiences of grief through sound.

This event marks the first in a year-long series of performances and transmissions taking place across hospices and hospital contexts in London. Each iteration offers a distinct, improvisational approach to listening, shared presence and engagement with grief, death and dying.

Working with hospices, hospitals and public sites, Zahedi creates spaces for collective and individual listening, exploring how sound can support reflection, care and creative expression within end-of-life and healthcare contexts. The project offers regular opportunities for audiences, patients, families and staff to participate in sonic practices that foreground listening, presence and improvisation.

This performance takes place in The Mulberry Room at Royal Trinity Hospice in Clapham: 

Mulberry Room, Royal Trinity Hospice, 30 Clapham Common North Side, Clapham, SW4 0RN

SONIC SUPPORT: ECO (The Extracorporeal Orchestra) forms part of Imperial Health Charity’s Artist in Residence Programme, delivered in collaboration with Studio Voltaire, and supported by Arts Council England and Imperial Health Charity.

About Abbas Zahedi

Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London, UK) is an artist working at the intersections of sonic and sculptural forms, exploring systems of care, thresholds of experience, and the social architectures of our time. His practice has been described as a form of dissociative realism — moving between intimacy and estrangement, and attuned to forms of meaning that sit beyond the purely material.

A former medic with training in psychiatry, Zahedi holds an MA in Contemporary Photography and Philosophy from Central Saint Martins. Recent awards include the Stanley Picker Fellowship (2024), Artangel: Making Time (2023), Frieze Artist Award (2022), Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award (2021), and the Khadijah Saye Memorial Scholarship (2017). He is Associate Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and has taught widely in the UK and internationally.

About Tom Harris

Tom Harris uses improvisational electronic and ambient music to explore and expand the boundaries of identity. Through rhythm, harmony, frequency, and vibration, he crafts immersive sensory experiences, tenderly inviting listeners back into their primary instrument: the body. In his work, sound becomes a container, an illuminator, a regulator, and a revealer of possibilities.

Tom’s embrace of fusion extends into interdisciplinary practice, feeling most at home between boundaries. His collaborative sound installation Earth Bound, with architecture studio FTGU and musician Juliana Day, transforms reclaimed steel plates and springs into resonant instruments, channeling sound through material to bridge the ethereal and the physical. The work has been shown in contemporary art galleries, festivals, and public spaces.

Releasing work under the identity In Sonic Service, Tom presents deep electronic improvisations through live streams. His recent project, Music Is Medicine, invites audiences to explore how music can act as a container for processing and understanding emotional experience.

About Royal Trinity Hospice

Royal Trinity Hospice is the local hospice for South West and Central London, providing free specialist palliative and end-of-life care for people living in Wandsworth and parts of Lambeth, Merton, Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Richmond. Royal Trinity Hospice supports patients from the moment of their diagnosis until the end of their lives, and afterwards, it supports those close to them for as long as they are needed.

royaltrinityhospice.london

About Imperial Health Charity

Imperial Health Charity helps hospitals do more through grants, arts, volunteering and fundraising. Working in partnership with the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, Imperial Health Charity funds major redevelopments, research and medical equipment at five London hospitals – Charing Cross, Hammersmith, Queen Charlotte’s & Chelsea, St Mary’s and the Western Eye – as well as helping patients and their families at times of extreme financial difficulty. Supporting the arts in healthcare, Imperial Health Charity manages an Arts Council-accredited hospital art collection and runs an arts engagement programme for patients and NHS staff. Imperial Health Charity also manages volunteering across all five hospitals, adding value to the work of staff and helping to improve the hospital experience for patients.

imperialcharity.org.uk

Access

This event is seated. If you have any questions or need assistance with your visit, please feel welcome to contact us at +44 (0) 20 7622 1294 or [email protected]. Read more about Visiting Royal Trinity Hospice here.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Studio Voltaire