Following an open call, we are pleased to introduce the first three artists joining us for the Vivid Lab programme this year.

okcandice

okcandice / sonic seamstress is an x-disciplinary artist-curator living and working between Birmingham and Berlin. Their practice is concerned with methodologies of grief via writing, sound, moving image and performance alongside the production of audio-visual archives.

In recent years, they have performed and exhibited work at Sophiensæle, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Festsaal Kreuzberg, Gropius Bau, HAU Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), The New Art Gallery Walsall, Birmingham Symphony Hall, The Barber Institute (Birmingham), Fabric, Southbank Centre (London), Kunstverein Hamburg, NN Contemporary Art (Northampton), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), and BOZAR (Brussels).

During their Vivid Lab residency, they will be researching contemporary oral history archives and documenting select public/civic spaces under threat of closure in Birmingham and surrounding areas through collaborative research and recording.

Nikki Sheth

Nikki Sheth is a sound artist and composer. Her work aims to give voice to the environment and foster a deeper connection with the natural world through field recordings, soundscape composition, spatial audio practices, multimedia installations, and sound walking.

Her work has been presented in the UK and internationally, including Ars Electronica (Austria). She recently collaborated on the Disruptive Frequencies album released with Nonclassical and her debut album, Sounds of Mmabolela was released with Flaming Pines in 2021. Her work has been described by The Wire Magazine as ‘gorgeously trippy’, ‘enchanting’, ‘beautiful’, ‘dark, murky and mysterious, but also peaceful, serene and utterly alluring’. In 2024 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast supported by the SCCA.

Nikki will be researching nocturnal soundscapes and night skies, commenting on the importance of natural darkness and how light pollution brutalises night-time spaces. The results of this research will be developed as a soundscape that explores light pollution in Digbeth.

Ray

A Birmingham-based performer, poet, organiser and facilitator, a lot of Ray’s work centres around his body and food as a storytelling device to convey how he experiences the world. He is interested in how discomfort can impact the creation of his work, the audiences’ experiences of it and how these two things overlap, if at all.

Recent exhibitions include durational papermaking piece Stand in the box at the upfront survivors pop up in Gloucester and being part of residency Language is a queer thing with the queer muslim project. He is also a fraction of queer dance party CRUSH, half of community organisation ACTIVATE and co runs a monthly queer writing workshop.

His research will revolve around the history and politics of sugar whilst figuring out how he can use it as a material to expose and conceal.