Artist and writer Emma Sporton shares her experience and reflections on Mōnad by Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Landé with MC/Producer Jai Nitai, which showed at Nottingham Contemporary on Wednesday 15 October 2025.

Alexandra ‘Spicey’ Landé is not afraid to live in the moment and catch the eyes of people around her. Her commitment to the music (delivered by MC/Producer Jai Nitai Lotus) to herself, to her own world, and to us, was consuming. She flitted between her relationships with the things and people sharing her space like a bee to pollen, which for the audience made this piece endlessly fun and engaging.

As the lights were first lowered, ‘Spicey’, still dancing, approached a roll of paper and began to wrap herself up in it. As she was covered in more layers of paper, cocooning herself or building up her armour, her movement and energy did not change, but visually she shifted. The outline of her warped, the shapes she made shifted under a play of coloured lights, and shadows thrown across the walls.

The paper hood and coat she wore, over time, was scattered across the space, or clung to her, moments from falling away. This did not stop her from moving, going up to the MC and letting the music charge up the relationship between them. She owned the space, moving freely beneath tables, up and down her ladder, towards and away from the audience. She had ‘freedom’ to do as she pleased, so she did.

Her ability to adapt and change never lessened. She grabbed some of the paper and sat in the dark. Her hands and the paper the only things visible by the light of her sewing machine, and this felt like one of the many universes within the piece, a small light within a massive dark space. Hands steadily patching something together.

Another universe; Spicey typing slowly, steadily, at a typewriter, the MC orbiting the mic and playing tumbling, falling melodies at the keyboard. Building and crumbling effortlessly, repeatedly.

Another universe was the community of us. The illusion audiences often have of being cozy, safe, and comfortable within the familiar role of observer, was then torn down. Sometimes the role of the audience is to be malleable and present and invested in whatever comes next.

‘Put your hands up!’

‘Spicey’ told us again and again, even as our shoulders began to burn. The lights were shining on us now. She played with us, and suddenly we were the performers, singing and shouting, playing games of call and response. She could see each one of us, climbing her ladder and calling us out if our arms drooped.

‘Put. Your. Hands. Up.’

We were a community of people committed to a shared task, even if the purpose eluded us. To keep our hands up we had to laugh and grimace and sway,

‘Put your hands up for Gaza […] for Sudan […] for Congo […] for Haiti’.

The list could have gone on. Suddenly, we were given a reason to stay in our pain. Sometimes the role of the audience is discomfort; we kept our hands up.