Before she graduated, our team photographer, Violeta Campos Reveilleau, caught up with two artists, Ana Luisa Cubas and Marissa Derrick, who successfully applied to our Arts SU Project Space open call last academic year. Together, they curated the 'Low End Theory' exhibition at Camberwell.

'Low End Theory' asked "how bass - understood as vibration, pressure, and survival strategy - can act as a curatorial method and research practice. Bass is not simply a frequency range; it is a method of transmission, a site of power, and a resonant memory that exists below legibility."

Revisit the exhibition through Violeta's photos here. Violeta Campos Reveilleau is a recent MA Fashion Photography Graduate from London College of Fashion. Check out more of her work via her Instagram profile here.

Our Project Space open call for this academic year is now live and open to all UAL students. If you're interested in learning more, sign up for the information session on Wednesday, 30th September, 12 - 1 pm, and read more about the opportunity here.

Interview with Marissa Derrick

Violeta: Can you tell me more about your background, what you've studied before, the area of your studies? 

Marissa: I grew up in Florida, I'm American, but after that I went and studied in Paris for a little over a year, where I did a very traditional art history program. It was nice, but I think I gained more from being in the city rather than the program itself. I kind of recognized it wasn't fulfilling. I wanted to do more. So I transferred to the New School in New York.

I went to Eugene Lang, which was a liberal arts college. I did a hybrid major, which was arts and context that included visual studies. So a little bit of art history, but more of the theory, which is what engaged me as a practitioner. And then culture and media studies because I've always been fascinated by film, music, and just other forms that weren't just seeing a painting or a photograph. So I did that, minored in creative writing as well. It's kind of personal interest and pastime, whether I do much with it or not, it definitely feeds me. Did that.

And then after graduating, I went on to work - I worked in both galleries, but I also worked in nightclubs. Raving, techno clubs, and DJing has been a part of my life for a while. So I was basically living in two worlds where I was working from 10 p.m. until 5 in the morning, doing stage managing, working door, which was kind of became an experience within its own where I had my own reputation and stuff and it was really fun just engaging with the different types of people that tried to enter the space but a lot of that I then took into my day job where I was working in galleries.

I did the traditional internship at a commercial gallery where we were selling works. It wasn't my favorite space. But I kind of met a mutual friend, an old school guy that throws raves in New York, who decided to do a digital and tech art gallery because he had some friends that were doing NFT. He was like ‘there has to be more to digital and tech art than just NFTs.’So he and one of his friends had opened up a space in Times Square. 

So I became the number three on that team and was an associate curator there for the next two years. And then one thing led to another. I kind of felt burnt out in New York in general. The city itself served its time. So then I got really interested in moving back to Europe. I was looking at London or Amsterdam. I kind of fell in love with CSM. The exhibition studies program seemed to fit my interests and now I'm here, studying, working on my dissertation which is about clubbing and the exhibition and then also putting on other exhibitions in addition to that. 

Violeta: Oh, you did so much! So you came to London only a year ago?

Marissa: Yes, a year ago. 

Violeta: And it's the first time you're living here? 

Marissa: Yeah, first time full-time. I visited a couple of times. I have some friends that are from London that I've known in the past, but this is the first time living in London. 

Violeta: What led you to choose this MA in specific? How do you think it helped you develop your practice, in the sense of a shift from the work you were doing before, from working on projects, into something more focused on your own research and personal investigation, that is a very different experience?

Marissa: Yeah, it's a very, very different experience. I think that at that point in which I was at in New York I was given a lot of responsibility and was working on cool projects, but I think it was really bad that I had two very specific worlds kind of colliding at that point and extending and expanding that research was something that interests me. 

I think that Central Saint Martins, it's a lot like the New School in general, like UAL, New School, they're quite similar, just Central Saint Martins is kind of like Parsons. It's a big fashion school, a big practice-based university. I think going to Central Saint Martins in general, where you have access to practicing artists and being in that environment was something that definitely drew me in. I enjoy the international aspect, I love meeting people from all over the world and working with different voices. 

In New York, there was some of that, but I think in the art world, it was very specific about who you would be working with. I felt that I personally needed to broaden my horizons and go elsewhere. The program itself, Exhibition Studies, I chose because I liked the way in which my course leaders kind of described it. They weren't just focused on the white cube, they were really emphasizing the idea that things like parades and festivals could also be considered exhibitions, which obviously for somebody who's interested in club studies, that's what I've kind of created for myself, it definitely something that was appealing. I also felt that was a place in which I would be supported and could have conversations, and not only be that alternative researcher in an academic room and be kind of laughed at for their outrageous non-traditional ideas of what an exhibition could look like.

I think that ever since I did that first program in undergrad, that was very traditional art history, I've just gone as far away from that as I can, and I think that this program, the way in which the description for it was written and once I had my interview speaking to them, it definitely is a really good environment for that. And it's also nice because we are one of the smallest masters at CSM. 

Violeta: Yeah, I heard you said it was only seven students.

Marissa: Yeah, there's seven of us. We're small. We're often forgotten about, in a lot of times in which we've had to use research, they've had to confirm that the MRes does count as a master's program. We're also two year masters. I know CSM has a lot of one year.It's definitely something that interests me. I always enjoy a smaller class environment because I think we've all built really good relationships with one another and just really learn. Everyone's doing something so unique and so uniquely them. And it's really nice to be in an environment like that, whereas I've been in bigger classes and I've had three people doing very similar things or kind of a running theme or just like what everyone seems interested in, and it's nice. Like, I think as an adult who went through university and then worked and has been outside of the university spirit. 

It is nice to experiment like this because it feels more like these are my peers and collaborators, rather than I'm just going to university again. Like, it really feels like an adult learning experience. 

Violeta: Has this been your first exhibition (Low End Theory, in Camberwell) here in London?

Marissa: That was my second one (Low End Theory). This one (referring to Pleasure, a Measure of Joy), we did in March 2025, so last year. 

Me, Anna, and three other MRS students, two from the Masters of Art and Philosophy. And then another girl in our Exhibition Studies class, the five of us got together in the Good Rice space that the university does. They had an open call and the five of us decided to piece together this wonderful show on ‘Pleasure’. Thinking about all forms and iterations between textures, sexual pleasure, joy, food. We had a really wonderful piece that this artist did about food and like thinking about the sexualization of food but also like the joy and eating and being full. It was really nice because we had two floors in that space there's about 18 artists so we kind of worked around with all sort of disciplines and mediums we had three textile or fashion pieces pair of shoes, we had a few visual like photographers um we had a small installation piece which was the food one she did a video and some sort of instructional menu manual that was all broken down, we had a pop-up that was selling ‘erotica’ downstairs. We had this one artist, he now works with car doors, but for this one he did really cool tiles that were taken from this like, I think it was also like a vintage porno or something. I can't remember exactly, but it was like these weird stills that he printed onto tiles. We had a girl who did a lingerie piece. We had a sound piece which was quite lovely and then yeah just a couple other like visual artists throughout so it was really really like multi-dimensional. We also had a live dance performance take place on the Saturday night while it was open so it was definitely a feat. 

Violeta: How did you go from this exhibition to your last exhibition Low End Theory, in Camberwell, at the end of 2025? And the last one was only the two of you? 

Marissa: Yes, only the two of us curated that one (Low End Theory).

Violeta: How did it go from working with five people to just getting together to plan and create an exhibition?

Marissa: So I think in a weird way, the one at Camberwell was a little bit easier to come up with. I think because Anna and I, we did a reading list article that we wrote for ‘After All’, which is the academic journal downstairs. Both of us, our practices are sound based and we're very interested in different aspects of sound, but kind of always coming back to the same text when we research and write. 

This is something that both of us have been very fascinated about for a long time. So when we saw the open call through the Arts SU for the space, I think we decided that we wanted to work with just us two and not have anybody else invited in for that because we knew we wanted to do something with sound and we also knew that we wanted to do something regarding research. That's why we had the nice little reading library in that exhibition. 

I think it was a way for us to both organize our thoughts, especially since we hadn't started writing our dissertations yet, but we definitely have been thinking about them, like, our whole first year was planning around it. So I think these are ideas and texts and readings and stuff that just kept coming back to us. And I think one of the driving factors as well was raising awareness to the importance of research and exhibition itself. So that's why that library to us was really important to have. It was definitely easier working with Anna than having three other people as well, I will say, because it's just one person to confer with. It was also nice because the Arts SU had a technician for us, whereas last time it was five of us. 

I surprisingly had a lot of knowledge just because of my past work in galleries, so I'd done a lot of installation and de-installation by myself, but it was still a lot of work because we were mounting televisions, painting, having to do... a lot of manual labor, whereas at the Camberwell space it was quite nice because ArtsSU handled most of that for us and we just kind of had to do all the other stuff which was gathering artists it was nice for the show because we had a couple relationships with some artists from our other show um two of them we invited back in um it was nice for this one as well because we were allowed to use artists outside of ual i have a really good friend at rca and i knew that her photos would do like really like captured the vision of what we were trying to do so I reached out to her to be a part of it and then the other artists we went through the alumni because we did want to make sure that since it was at a UAL space that there was good representation and we figured alumni would be a great way to do it just because I mean it was the beginning of the year so it's kind of hard to get new students with finished works but it's also a good way to invite former students back into the space and recontextualize it. 

So that one was definitely a bit more of a passion project. Like, the Pleasure show for me, I was very, very interested in it, but I think because it wasn't something directly related to, like, my personal practice or really my interests. It was fun, but it did feel a little bit more like my role in that was more of what it was when I was working at a gallery where it was like, okay, here's our checklist, like ‘we need to do this, we need to do that.’ And a little bit more moving around. So it took me a little bit to really love it. 

Whereas the Camberwell show, That one was a little trickier putting together because it was so short. We only had two weeks to figure everything out. It was more rushed, but I think when that one was up and just the ideas that we were having around it and the text and kind of research and stuff, it definitely came a little bit more naturally, which I guess makes sense because it was like sound and we were already thinking about it. 

Violeta: If you would like to talk more about what you're doing for your project, your final dissertation, and your next steps in your career.

Marissa: In my dissertation I'm writing on clubbing general kind of term but I'm looking specifically at like the site experience and structure of going out to a techno club I think that a lot of current discourse on clubbing is more focused on the cultural or subcultural debates around it I think that there's a really big change after the pandemic and I feel like a lot of texts written from 2020 to now really just don't touch that shift that's actually happening to the experience itself. So my dissertation is kind of starting to grasp that research. I look at a few techno-cultures themselves to kind of discuss them architecturally, but also how they function in terms more of like space and time. But then I also go to look at other parties and organizers who are taking spaces that aren't traditional clubs and presenting that experience beyond that. 

That's kind of the working progress right now. We're still researching. We're still writing it. But I think post-uni, I definitely would love to continue working with sound and art itself. I think, weirdly, being back in art school, I'm feeling a pull to curate more and be involved in that. But I don't think that I want to do that full time. I've really got a little more interested. Maybe working in the technical aspects of sound. That being working for someone like Sonos, or a speaker company. And doing kind of their tech or cultural sides. 

That's definitely what I would think of post uni. I think that after graduating, some of the biggest things that I'm definitely going to take from being at this university are the people I've met, because there are a lot of talented students here. And I think a lot of people have a lot of places that they can go, so I've definitely been talking to a lot of students in other departments and I think that's been the most fun part of doing exhibitions as well. I think that's in general just the importance of being a curator or having students that are curators in these courses I think the best experiences that I've gained from doing these shows is seeing other artists meet each other and start to have conversations and kind of network beyond that I mean that's the biggest thing that drew me to nightlife in general. 

In New York, I went to uni during the pandemic and some underground partying. We weren't physically going in person, but I was meeting a lot of people. And I gained a large network of friends, and some of those friends just were friends, but some became future collaborators and workers because a lot of people that I'd met were people that worked in art and nightlife things in the cultural realm. So I think there's a really big crossover between clubbing and exhibition. 

That's why I'm here and kind of what I stand for. But I think the biggest thing is just continuing to push for IRL events and continuing to push for bringing in people of different backgrounds, different disciplines, different practices and having these conversations. I think that that's really important. I think that an opening night is arguably one of the most important nights of a gallery show solely because you're pulling in so many different people that either worked on the show or associated with people that were invited or people that saw it and were maybe just interested in the art there. I think that that's where the best conversations are going to come from. 

Violeta: Do you think the two exhibitions you have done here have helped in meeting other people, not those that were doing the exhibition with you, but friends of friends - other artists in general? 

Marissa: Yeah, I would definitely say so. I think our first exhibition was really successful because we had a large amount of artists, all those artists. We didn't know any of them. We found them all through just CSM-connected Instagrams and then going through the studios at the uni and leaving notes for people whose works we liked. And so there were 18 of them and then five curators but then everyone started inviting people and it was also put together quite fast. It was done within a month and none of us expected it but almost 100 people came to the opening. It was massive and there was also this crazy moment where somebody had brought someone in from the street and they were singing ‘Free from Desire’ and I was like ‘what is happening, this is amazing’ like ‘wow this is really successful’ and we just didn't realize that some of the artists we had pulled had so many friends but not just like friends, but very interesting friends, and some I've definitely met some people that I very much still keep in contact with that were mutually through other people invited. 

I think our next exhibition, it was a much quieter opening. There were less people, but it was shorter duration. But the people that came were definitely, like, very interesting, very kind, and were all, really into the art. And I know as well that since it was at Camberwell, it was an active university space, I know that lots of students and other people visiting had come through and seen it. And I know that because we had little handouts, and they were all gone by the time we closed the show. 

It felt good and I think to me, those things are more of a marker of success even with the Camberwell show having less people at the opening I still think it's a marker of success because still people came - people engaged and all the artists themselves were quite happy - and that was also the show where all the artists very much were connecting with each other. I had one of the artists who did some of the photographs she came up to me and was making sure that I introduced her to every other person that did work and the one artist I brought from RCA she had me and help her make a TikTok to promote her brand. I was like, ‘okay, this really isn't my thing, branding a TikTok. But I was like, okay, here’. And I was pushing other artists to get involved so they could all do it together collaboratively and stuff. That was nice. 

Violeta: Was it hard to have access to the spaces?

Marissa: Here's the very interesting thing. I will say the difference between New York and London, a big one, and university-sense. In New York, I pretty much had no opportunities for curation. I mean, maybe they were there, maybe they weren't. It was an awkward time because of the pandemic. So it was kind of hard to tell how much of my university there had the resources. But here I will say they do make these opportunities pretty clear. I think my course leaders as well, because they know that we're interested in curation and we're such a small group that doesn't get many opportunities that really kind of fit them. There's always open calls for visual artists or practicing. Anna and I have gotten very good at finding them, but we definitely found out, I will say, that the application process for both were pretty easy. The first space was a little awkward because they had too many applications, so they decided to split groups. So we were technically sharing the space with an MFA group. They just did a very small thing and had some workshops, so it did end up working out in the end, but at first it was a little tricky because they wanted to do workshops with kids and our show was about pleasure. So it was kind of like having discussions, having conversations, putting certain things downstairs, marked 18 plus, just kind of being in dialogue. But luckily it worked out at the end. 

But with the Arts SU, we applied the first time, got rejected, but the second time we applied, I went to the meeting that they had. They just had an online informational session, and that was actually quite helpful because they gave more of the language to use when applying and really emphasised that the project's more for professional development outside of university. So that was really helpful. fruitful and I will say that the applications themselves were pretty easy to do but definitely tricky because it is like you are submitting having other people that are also submitting and just being selected but finding space through the university has been a lot easier than I thought but I'm also coming from a context where I'm not used to having that opportunity through university content so hey I think that was a very good.

Interview with Ana Luisa Cubas

Violeta: Are you from the UK? 

Ana Luísa: I'm from Chicago. I'm from the States. I lived in New York for seven years. I went to NYU and kind of designed my own major, I went to a school where I could completely choose my course of study. So I created a major called Criticism as Curation in the Arts, largely looking at how the creation of historical narratives are made in art history, largely relating to musical history. 

I took a lot of courses in traditional visual arts history as well as musicology, museum studies, and I was really interested in who had ownership over music archives and who created the narratives and who had rights of the recordings which really define genres or groups of people. A lot of my work has always been situated in Latin America and South America specifically. My family's from Peru so I grew up spending a lot of time there. I speak Spanish and so looking at the creation of historical narratives and traditions of indigeneity in relation to music and art was always something that was important to me. So I decided to do the master's of research here. 

And exhibition studies is kind of like the histories of collecting, histories of archival work, histories of presenting art. And that relationship between art and its publics. So, Marissa and I are kind of the only ones that are largely looking on a sonic level, like music. 

Hers is much more based on club culture, club as exhibition, things like that, where mine is looking a lot more at historicity and musicology and sometimes sound art, you know, questions like what is considered art and what is considered sound and what is considered noise. 

And this hierarchy of the sense of that created, you know, historical narratives and historical truths, as we know them today. So when you go into an art institution, you go into a museum, history is largely visual. When you look at things, that's the way that, you know, it's considered valid. And so I'm looking at this hierarchy of the senses and what it means to look as sound as equally valid and truthful in defining history as sight. 

So it's been really fun kind of digging into that more. And my dissertation, so what I'll, it's a master's in research. So the first year is relatively taught. And the second year is all research-based. Mine is on the Majaz Project. 

Do you know what that is? It is an independent record label that started out as this independent project of the Palestinian Sound Archive. So more of a, I don't want to say grassroots, but a self-led, self-determined archive of Palestinian musical history. So things that are in it are remixes, club recordings, Palestine had this wonderful disco movement, so Palestinian disco princesses, folk chants, wedding ethnographic recordings of wedding songs that they would use, and traditional dances, things like that. And so I'm looking at what it means to create an archive that is actively an anti-institutional archive. And why create an archive when you don't feel represented in one already. And who has access to those. 

Largely for Palestinians, the cassettes that are in this archive that I'm researching were either seized by the Israeli military, or burnt, destroyed in bombings or basically just didn't have the means to ever be digitized. Or if they were preserved in an archive, they're largely inaccessible to the Palestinian people in which they represent because they can't access the archives that are majority in Israel. So I'm looking at that. That's been a lot of my work this year. 

But I think that Marissa and I both were in that mindset of music as it pertains to institutions or the lack thereof, which is why we did Low-End theory at Camberwell. 

Violeta: Who created the photographs that were in the exhibition, the paintings and other works?

Ana Luisa: They were all largely CSM students or alumni that we found. Some we had collaborated with in the past for our first exhibition. When UAL had Good Rice - this old cafe that they created into a gallery space. And you applied for, you know, an exhibition there and we were able to receive it and have this ability to take over the space. 

Marissa and I worked with three other girls to create Pleasure, A Measure of Joy, which is the publication you're looking at. And then we were able to receive funding by the British Art Network and the Tate to do the exhibition catalogs. So a few of the artists that we used for the first exhibition were able to participate in the second, just because they had work that really related to the themes. So that was Jamie Spillett and Erinny Bailey.

Erinny does a lot of wonderful photography work on the understanding of young womanhood, growing up, self-identifying femininity and sexuality as it pertains to young women. And so she had this great collection of photos of girls prepping, going out to the club and going out that night. And then Jamie is an absolutely wonderful photographer who graduated this past summer from MA in Contemporary Photography. And they focus a lot on queer representation and self-identification. So Jamie has continually been really involved in kind of club culture and queer nightlife. So we were able to have some wonderful images from them in different kinds of hidden places, queer spaces for nightlife culture. 

We were really looking at ways to understand putting on an exhibition with sonic and sound at the forefront without actually having that audio component be the only thing that defines it. So we were looking at how you understand sonic culture and specifically bass culture, low-end culture in ways that can also be seen and felt and not only heard. So those two artists were really, really fun to work with, and then we had an open call, we did studio visits, and I believe we had almost 10 artists in total, which is great.

Since Marissa and I both come from the exhibition studies background and a research-based background, we wanted to incorporate a library. So we took a lot of the pieces of writings, exhibitions, albums, and such that have kind of informed our exhibition and the themes surrounding the exhibition and created a little library, which was really nice, and it seemed to be utilised. We wanted to have more of an interactive component to the exhibition and research as method is something so important to us so we wanted to bring that forth in the show as well so we had this um stool from a wonderful alum who created these kind of sonic sculptures but they were they were all seating based on kind of sound waves and um the relationship with the body and sound and they seem to always be utilized, which was great. Every time I stopped by the gallery, there were people going through the books, you know, taking photos, writing them down, and hopefully our show could also help inform their practice or have them think of sound in a different way, in a way that can be felt without, you know, particularly needing to be heard. 

Violeta: Are you guys going to sell these catalogues? 

Ana Luísa: Yeah, we're selling them. We gave them to all the artists. Yeah, it was great.

Violeta: Those are really beautiful. 

Ana Luísa: Thank you. Honestly, I like this. Thank you so much. It was fun. I think we also created a community among all the artists. We got really close with the artists and were able to facilitate through the catalogue and through the funding, artists in conversation, people talking about their practice. And we fostered a lot of connections with artists that have kind of remained friends or have collaborated since the show, which is really nice. It was fun, but without that first show, we wouldn't have been able to do the second. And, you know, we were lucky to get both spaces with funding through Arts SU. 

Violeta: Why did you choose to come to do your Master of Arts at UAL?

Ana Luísa: I chose UAL because I really wanted a place that I thought would challenge me. I knew that and always had this goal that I was going to be a professor. I've always wanted to be a professor of musicology and a professor with more of an interdisciplinary lens of understanding archives and sonic archives and sonic artwork. I worked in the music industry out of undergrad for two years, and I think I felt like I needed a bit more stimulus, and I really wanted to pursue that goal of being a professor. So I looked at the best places to do it and exhibition studies was just this program that didn't really exist anywhere else and it was really interesting to provide me with the historical depth of these questions, that I was asking, and the things that I was looking into - collections management, archival work, the creation of museums and institutions and ownership of, you know, artwork and items and how all of that has kind of come to be. So it really worked out. 

Violeta: Do you plan to stay in London to develop your practice further, or to go back to America?

Ana Luísa: I am currently waiting to hear back from PhD programs. So, I'm in the interview process right now. 

My goal is still to be a professor of musicology, and I think that that's really important to me because I never had a professor in those departments talking about these things, talking about identity of Latin people as pertaining to music and sound, and ownership and indigeneity and understandings of collections as a means of self-definition and self-representation. 

Ideally, you know, in the States, it takes five plus years to get a PhD, but I will be teaching during that time. So the opportunity to develop curriculum and teach classes, and continue my research, and continue working in curation and exhibitions, and working in archives is something that I will continue doing. 

I've been very lucky that UAL and Arts SU has provided me with the flexibility to take advantage of things like having these open gallery spaces, having these open calls and Marissa and I have just been really lucky to get those opportunities and utilise them as much as we can. 

Since leaving the music industry, I have started to do a lot of freelance work, so I'm working on starting my own company taking on a few projects every month in relation to independent artists, independent musicians, and contract work, consulting, private collections management. 

And I worked at Sony right out of school. I worked in the Latin department and I worked a lot with archives and artist development. And I worked specifically with Sony's The Orchard, which represents independent artists and labels. And I think that was really important for me as a creative to be able to work with and provide the resources. And now I have the groundwork to be able to do that on my own in a bit of a different capacity. So that's been ramping up. It's been great, but the goal is to have that alongside a PhD. Ideally going back to New York and Brooklyn.

Violeta: How was the separation of the two years of your MA, and how was that for you?

Ana Luísa: The first year is like a lot of teaching, like being taught in classrooms with lectures. And then the second is relatively more independent. We meet once or so a week. There's a really strong emphasis on independent research and writing. 

Since it is a master's in research, our dissertation carries a lot of weight and it's an incredibly long process. But so, the whole year we get to do that, which is fun and daunting at the same time. It's a really good challenge. And I think everyone is really doing a good job of working deep in the archives, deep in research, and doing lots of interviews to try and get whatever you need for it. 

Violeta: How was that for you in understanding how to develop your work, as well as how to get to those archives, how to reach out to those people, and where to go as well? For example, archives can have different organisational systems and be hard to navigate.

Ana Luísa: Yes, it's a learning curve. I think for me, the first year of the program and UAL's resources were really great for that. I mean, UAL has amazing archives, and we had workshops, and we visited archives as a course to understand how to deal with and how to read these material sources, to know what kind of research you can get from that. And from there, you're expected to take it on the rest of your own way, which is really good. 

I'm lucky that I worked in archives in a corporate setting. And so I did have that background, and a lot of it is just reaching out and understanding the resources that you can have, also as a student and as a creative. Specifically, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Welcome Collection have incredible resources that, if you reach out, you can look at their archives, but you would never really know otherwise, especially if you don't have a reason to look into it. 

But yeah, there are a lot of workshops here to take advantage of that, I think, that are really great. The libraries are wonderful. So it's kind of a conglomerate of all that.