Gary Stewart: Remanence Performance

Friday 7 August, 6-8:30pm (Live performance 7:30-8pm) in BRIG Cafe)

Join us for sonics as Gary Stewart concludes his work for Birmingham Media Archive Project (The First Decade). Gary will build an immersive soundscape that excavates the echoes, traces and density of past and present Digbeth, responding to an area that is in flux. The work will resonate in the space from 7:30pm as a directional conversation with low-frequency vibrations using a geophone, exterior sounds from contact mics and interior electromagnetic frequencies.

Gary Stewart: Remanence Workshop

Saturday 8 August 2-5pm in BRIG Cafe:

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Join artist Gary Stewart for a free, hands-on workshop that invites sharing and exploration of the key ideas that have shaped his artistic practice over the past 40 years. Combining practical experimentation with discussion that examines remix culture in both the analogue and digital age, exploring how archives, editing, and reuse have opened up new forms of authorship and participation.

Through collaborative audio-visual making, the workshop will reflect on what it means to create in a state of perpetual post-production, where works are constantly edited, revised, and remixed, and where there may be no such thing as a final version. At the heart of the workshop will be Stewart’s montage mixer MIDI keyboard, alongside a range of synthesizers and sound devices that will allow for open contributions to an evolving collective composition.

• Participants are asked to bring up to five short recordings of environmental sounds captured on their phone (or sound recorders), such as a boiling kettle, barking dog, passing traffic, or other everyday noises. Each clip should be no longer than one minute. These recordings will become the raw material for creative transformation, and incorporation into a shared audio-visual artwork.This is an opportunity to explore contemporary approaches to media, remixing, and collaborative creation in an informal setting, you don’t need previous experience with sound to take part and there will be opportunities through the day to record environmental sounds.

Gary Stewart is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of sound, moving image and computational creativity. His work examines social and political issues of identity, culture, and technology. Through the application of innovative technologies and practices he is part of a global network of collaborators who are advocates for equality, climate justice and better health through the arts, especially those from marginalised communities. Operating through a range of theoretical, fictional, and artistic frames, his work traverses media art, experimental music, and research.

Birmingham Media Archive Project: Responses to the West Midlands Anti Deportation Campaign

Friday 7 August, screenings 2-7pm in the Vivid Projects space

BMAP cohort members Vignesh Venkataramaiah and Erinn Dhesi share moving image and text works developed in response to the materials they encountered inthrough the Birmingham Media Archive Project (BMAP), a resource which draws from the records and archives of the antecedent organisations – Wide Angle and TURC Video – absorbed by Birmingham Centre for Media Arts (which went on to trade as ‘VIVID’).

The works reflect on key films and interview tapes which document the foundations and impact of the West Midlands Anti Deportation Campaign. In 1984 the video ‘Muhammad Idrish Must Stay’ was commissioned to support NALGO’s campaign to stop the deportation of one of its members, Muhammad Idrish, following the breakdown of his marriage.  Vignesh Venkataramaiah draws particular attention to footage captured  from a Birmingham rally held in October 1983, which features in the campaign film.

Erinn Dhesi has worked with the individual interviews conducted by director Ranbir Bains as part of her 1991 West Midlands Anti Deportation Campaign film produced by TURC Video. Combining personal interviews with archival footage of street protests and family life, Dhesi examines the intersection of immigration law, domestic survival, and the cultural pressure of “shame and humiliation” experienced by South Asian women. Dhesi’s film captures a definitive moment in British Asian history where a community successfully organised to protect its most vulnerable members.

Everyone featured in the film won their campaign.

The Birmingham Media Archive Project is delivered by Vivid Projects, funded with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.