An international selection of moving image, exhibition, discussion and print which explored the constructs of language and meaning from far reaching cultural perspectives.

The exhibition spanned film which reflected the post-Structuralist theories of the 1970s to documented actions and contemporary works newly commissioned by VIVID. In response to a subject of such historical depth the exhibition incorporated a range of approaches from Iranian artist Barbad Golshiri’s direct and political challenge to the language of spiritual authority to Gary Hill’s stretching out of the possibilities for image as language and the physicality of sound. Artists included: John Adams, William Burroughs, Barbad Golshiri, Gary Hill, Valerie Mrejen, Aura Satz, Guy Sherwin, Margaret Tait, and Olivier Zabat.

A screening and events programme ran throughout, including screenings from Video Data Bank’s John Smith Anthology, Valerie Mrejen, Pork and Milk (2004), Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider, Speaking in Tongues (2009) and Samuel Beckett, Not I (1975).

VIVID also commissioned a performance by artist Aura Satz; using a Chladni plate, some tuning forks, and other such contraptions, Satz performed an annotated, illustrated, fragmented talk on sound, its visualisation, and the utopian belief in a universal alphabet.