21 Jul 2010

Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry at VIVID, Birmingham

VIVID is delighted to announce details of Inbindable Volume, an ambitious new multi-screen video installation by Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry.

The multiple screens journey through the Brutalist space of an empty library interior which unfolds in an assemblage of tracking shots. The concrete physicality of the architecture is sensuously rendered against the unseen imagined spaces alluded to within the books held in the space; drawing a parallel, perhaps, to Jorge Luis Borges' short story The Library of Babel in which the author imagines an infinite number of hexagonal libraries containing books with every possible ordering of letters, spaces, and punctuation marks.

The rhythm and texture of the film is driven by the voice of an omnipresent narrator, who describes the lifespan of a building from conception to abandonment - through a text which skips unsettlingly between past, present and future tense. The elements of the work conspire to generate multiple perspectives in time and space creating a state of flux between continual movement, and a sense of security engendered by the narrator's formal and reassuring tone.

Filmed in Birmingham's iconic Central Library, the city's most infamous example of Brutalist architecture, Inbindable Volume is an exploration of the journey between conception and materialization - both in architecture and books - and what becomes of ideologies after they have been realised in material form.

Launching VIVID's 2010/11 artists commissioning programme, the work has been developed during a three month residency at VIVID's project space in Eastside with the support of The Henry Moore Foundation, Birmingham City of Culture, and the Jan van Eyck Academie, an institute for research and production in the fields of fine art, design and theory in the Netherlands.

The exhibition opens at VIVID on 29 July and continues to 21 August 2010. The exhibition tours to Citric Gallery, Italy in March 2011.

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Established in 1992, VIVID has a longstanding commitment to the development of media arts in Birmingham through research, production, and commissioning programmes.

VIVID has exhibited artists who work across the arts and media spectrum and the exhibition programme has juxtaposed new artist research and practice with key historical works. From unsung heroes of the eighties such as electronic art pioneers The Vasulkas, Turner prize nominee Richard Billingham, the space allows artists to work in residence on site before exhibiting new work. VIVID has also introduced new audiences to seminal yet little seen works from legendary live artists, film makers and digital experimenters including Marina Abramović, Ron Athey, Stuart Brisley, Valie Export, Tehching Hsieh, Kurt Kren, George Maciunas and Yoko Ono amongst many others. Alongside the exhibitions, VIVID runs a screening programme, working with partners across the UK and internationally to bring a diverse range of rare and new works to Birmingham on a regular basis.