- Venue
- Vivid Projects
- Starts
- Thursday, July 29, 2021
- Ends
- Saturday, July 31, 2021
- Address
- 16 Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street Birmingham B5 5RT
- Location
- West Midlands
- Organiser
- Vivid Projects
We start with Black Hole Club alumni Michael Lightborne, who presents ‘Extraction: A Psycho-geological Report’ – a set of short audio-visual pieces incorporating sounds and images sampled from rocks, minerals and soil in South Birmingham. Developed during a period of semi-isolation during the 2020 lockdowns, these experiments form part of Michael’s current interest in ‘psychetecture’; a concept used in the 1980s comic Mister X to describe the psychological effects of architecture and urban forms.
The word ‘sampling’ can refer to both the activity of appropriating snippets of sound for use in a musical composition, and to the geological practice of extracting a representative section of earth or rock for analysis. The sample is processed to reveal its composition, its properties, potentials, hidden layers and deposits, unexpected relationships and activity. These films open up a world of vibrant, delirious extraction/abstraction, and through this address a politics of extraction. They consider the ways that we instrumentalise the stuff of this planet, and also sometimes form irrational attachments to apparently dull, insensate things.
Who gets the right to designate something a ‘raw material’ or a ‘resource’? And how could you love a stone?
Based in Birmingham and Cork, Michael Lightborne works with video, sound and print to engage with questions of landscape, popular culture, memory, and technology. His sound works have been featured on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Late Junction‘, NTS Radio, Resonance FM, WFMU, Framework Radio, ‘Interiorities‘ on RTM.FM, Bepi Crespan Presents on CITR, Institute of Spectrasonic Sound on KEPR. Recent texts have been published in Urban Sensographies and the audio project Sound of the Projection Box.
He has exhibited in exhibitions and film festivals in the UK and internationally including: Arte Non Stop Festival, Buenos Aires, Art Night Venezia, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, BOM, Cinecity 2015, Melbourne, Cinematique! Film Festival, Cork Film Festival, Coventry Biennial of Contemporary Art, Flatpack, Glasgow Film Festival, Herbert Gallery and Museum, Parachute Light Zero III International Short Film Festival, Trade Gallery and Vivid Projects.
Visiting and Digbeth Late
Following the recent announcement that restrictions are easing from 19 July, we wanted to provide an update on planning your visit to Vivid Projects. To protect everyone’s health and safety we ask that visitors continue to wear face coverings when visiting, unless exempt. Please ring the buzzer on arrival and sign in using the NHS COVID-19 app upon arrival. You will be met by staff and guided to the hand sanitiser station. Should you forget to pack your mask, we can provide them.
Bookings can be made in advance here for those who would prefer to pre-arrange their visit. We will be able to accommodate walk in visits of groups of 6 or two households.
On Friday 30 July, the installation will be open 6-8pm alongside after hours events with Digbeth spaces Centrala, Grand Union and Eastside Projects.
