Apex Zero
- Associate Lecturer
- Digital Direction MA
Apex Zero is a multidisciplinary artist, creating primarily as an emcee, beat maker, filmmaker, photographer and writer.
Apex is a Tutor on the Graduate Diploma in Art & Design and Associate Lecturer on MA Digital Direction. He is a powerful lyricist and cinematic storyteller who brings people together to create multi-layered experiences and provoke change.
He is a member of several international collectives, co-founder of I Am Hip-Hop Magazine and an organiser of the global Hip Hop community End of the Weak.
Apex has an MA in Philosophy and Critical Theory from the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), has previously taught at Tsinghua University (Beijing) as well as on the RCA Critical & Historical Studies.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
Gallery
More information
Research interests
Apex’s research focuses primarily on global Hip Hop and Bass Music culture, African Caribbean Spirituality and storytelling practices, with a focus on drumming, dance and the spoken word.
His work explores polytemporality, freedom, the impact of european (particularly british) colonialism, especially racism, its embedded structures and state violence.
Practice
Apex explores his research ideas through several mediums, often in combination and in collaborative, co-productive and community driven methodologies.
Having built his reputation on the underground Hip Hop, poetry and club scenes of London and Beijing, Apex has produced several solo and group music releases and shot, directed, produced and edited a strong catalogue of music videos and films. He has also produced numerous live events and tours, for himself and other artists across several continents.
Beyond his work as an emcee and poet, his writing mostly takes the form of essays, reviews and interviews, primarily via I Am Hip Hop Magazine. He has also written several of his own theatre productions, as well as for those of others.
Apex’s latest work is an on-going project, Drummer Warrior Storyteller, a living album that brings together Apex’s skillset, as well as those of a growing community of exceptional collaborators to create multi-layered, multimodal and multidisciplinary experiences built around African Caribbean storytelling techniques.
Building on Audre Lorde’s writing and Alexander G. Weheliye’s Habeas Viscus in particular, the album centres African Caribbean perspectives, exploring experiences of oppression and liberation of diasporic, migrant and marginalised people in London and beyond.
Research funding
RCA Research & Knowledge Exchange & Innovation (RKEI) Research Development Fund (2024) with Dr. Ekua McMorris, Drummer Warrior Storyteller
Arts Council England Project Grant (2022), Drummer Warrior Storyteller
Arts Council England Project Grant (2021), Drummer Warrior Storyteller
Audience award
Audience Award, Short Focus Film Festival, 2021, Drummer Warrior Storyteller (Part One)
Current and recent projects
Drummer Warrior Storyteller
2018-present (on-going)
Drummer Warrior Storyteller is a living album, embodying Chinua Achebe’s perception of storytelling; the Drummer calls the people, the Warrior fights the war, the Storyteller recounts the events, giving meaning to the survival of those who endure.
Made with many collaborators and partners, Drummer Warrior Storyteller focuses on the anger caused by racism and state violence, whilst striving to break from the image of the ‘struggling’ Black figure, expressing polytemporal, intergenerational joy and Love.
Pushing the boundaries of what a music album is and can be, the album fuses music with multiple visual/sonic artforms to produce powerful immersive installations and live performances.
The project blurs lines between multiple fields, media and methods, creating a new paradigm for music-based work. It is simultaneously singular, modular, interdependent, independent, fixed, fluid and constantly evolving, existing in liminal space between the embodied state of the music album and the transient essence of performance.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Selected Releases
Apex Zero (2023) Drummer Warrior Storyteller (Part Two). London: Unrefined I
Apex Zero (2022) Drummer Warrior Storyteller (Part One). London: Unrefined I
Apex Zero (2022) Drummer Warrior Storyteller (Part One). London: Unrefined I
Apex Zero (2016) All and Nothing. London: Design Chaos. Beijing: DB Bros
Apex Zero (2013) Reality Provoking Liberation. London: Design Chaos.
Selected Performances / Exhibitions
(2024) Apex Zero: Drummer Warrior Storyteller. Evolutionary Arts Hackney (EartH). London.
(2024) Breakin' Convention: Open Art Surgery, Sadler’s Wells. London.
(2023) Super Organic, BMT Culture Hub x EDF London Jazz Festival. London.
(2023) Code 1 Presents: The Chi Dome, Alexandra Palace. London.
(2023) Black Projector: Drummer Warrior Storyteller, BMT Culture Hub. London.
(2022) Crucible: Earthseed, Stuben Gallery, Pratt Institute, New York, USA
(2022) Apex Zero: Drummer Warrior Storyteller, Bernie Grants Arts Centre. London.
(2021) Apex Zero: Drummer Warrior Storyteller, The Hackney Social. London.
(2021) Breakin' Convention 2021, Sadler’s Wells. London.
Selected Publications
Apex Zero and Susannah Haslam (2022) ‘Doing Them Justice’, in Open Curriculum: Carbon, Solidarity, the Work of Art commissioned as part of Dani Admiss’ Sunlight Doesn’t Need a Pipeline Project. (Online)
Apex Zero (2020). ‘Review | London Dance Duo FUBUNATION present ‘Ruins’. I Am Hip Hop Magazine (Online).