Vivid Projects: Revolution 04: Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions
Date uploaded: March 27, 2013
Vivid Projects: Revolution 04: Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions
“In the late sixties Arts Labs sprang up like mushrooms across the country. You could say it was almost like going indoors after the 'Summer of Love'. Even David Bowie took a year out of the music business to run an arts lab in Beckenham.”
– Terry Grimley
Vivid Projects is delighted to be working with Flatpack Festival to present some very special events focusing on the unsung story of the Birmingham Arts Lab.
Formed in 1968 and inhabiting a former youth club on Tower Street in Newtown, the Birmingham Arts Lab comprised a host of colourful characters including performers, artists, producers, musicians, and writers who took experimentation to new heights amidst a make-shift environment which included “the world’s most uncomfortable cinema”, a coffee bar, and a theatre auditorium constructed from pallets.
In homage to this sometimes itinerant and ferociously creative structure, Vivid Projects has commissioned artist Trevor Pitt to excavate untold stories first hand, spinning a bricolage of memories from the spirited and anarchic early days at Tower Street. These audio gems will form the basis of 3-day exhibition at Vivid Projects from Thu 28 – Sat 30 March. Vivid also hosts a special performance by experimental composer Sarah Angliss on Saturday 30 March, 7pm.
Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions:
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THURSDAY 28th – SATURDAY 30th MARCH, open Thu 12-7PM & Fri-Sat, 12-5PM at Vivid Projects
Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions - Exhibition (admission free)
Vivid Projects invites audiences to step into a ramshackle audio environment where detritus is touched by alchemy. The scene is set for an atmospheric audio installation featuring rare interviews with members of the Birmingham Arts Lab including: printer Ernie Hudson; founder of the Arts Lab Sound Workshop Jolyon Laycock; comic artist and illustrator Hunt Emerson; member of the Birmingham Fim Makers Co-op Tony Bloor; film librarian Neil Gammie; film programmer Tony Jones; and Terry Grimley, latterly arts correspondent for the Birmingham Post. Hear how interdisciplinary exuberance shook post-war middle class culture out of its comfort zone!
What more can be said about a place that made DJ John Peel its first life member?
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SAT 30 MARCH, 7PM at Vivid Projects
Live performance by Sarah Angliss (advance tickets £5)
Bookings are now open for an extraordinary performance from Sarah Angliss in the spirit of Bruce Lacey, where electronic music meets the uncanny. Sarah Angliss is a composer, thereminist and musical hacker who performs live with her own robots. Angliss's dreamlike music taps into her obsessions with obsolete machines, faded variety acts and the darkest European folk tales.
Tickets cost £5 in advance and are available here: http://vividprojectsrevolution4.eventbrite.co.uk/
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Flatpack Festival also presents a series of Arts Lab inspired events as part of its annual festival which takes place in venues across Birmingham from 21st – 31st March 2013. Click here for more information.
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Birmingham Arts Lab Sessions is the fourth revolution of Vivid Projects' eight-month launch programme 33 REVOLUTIONS, which asks the question, can art and culture be a catalyst for social change?
