Free event, limited spaces so please pre-book. 

Join us for a live event at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery to conclude this year’s Cut Copy Remix project. Cut Copy Remix is a collaborative project with Vivid Projects and the artist programme Black Hole Club, that uses Birmingham’s collections to inspire the creation of new art works.

Artists will be presenting new work which showcases the creative potentials of the Birmingham Museums Trust Digital Image Resource; the first collection in the UK to make all out-of-copyright artworks available for free under a Creative Commons Zero Licence.

Emily Mulenga presents Ringtones and Logos, a live coding performance in which nostalgia, (over)familiarity and the unexpected overlap, delving into the soundtrack that mobile phones have provided us over recent decades. As seen on an Instagram meme: “Born too late to have owned property, born too soon to be a teen Tiktok star, born just in time to have paid 99p for a ringtone.”

Mulenga has considered the real and digital hybrid existence of the Birmingham collections and the emotional legacies present in archived telecommunication devices — with the initial inspiration being a 1995 BT Jet mobile phone from the museum collection.

Presenting work alongside Emily are Black Hole Club members Courtenay Welcome, Sophie Huckfield and Polly Brant. Courtenay Welcome has been exploring the collection through installation and assemblage. Sophie Huckfield has developed video work that draws from materials from BMAG’s digital collection, the TURC archives at Vivid Projects and found footage of demolitions in the Midlands that explores the legacies of privatisation, environmentalism, migrant labour and Trade Unionism in the West Midlands. Polly Brant has developed video and participatory work that invites in curiosity, pulling apart and reforming through collages that explore the postcards role as a keepsake and the social histories held in the museums collection.

Biographies

Emily Mulenga is a multimedia artist. Using visuals and sound that draw upon video games, cartoons and the internet, her practice explores themes of capitalism, feminism, technology, love and existential anxieties.

Courtenay Welcome’s work explores the rich complexities of race, memory, space and time through painting, installation, photography, assemblages and performance.

Sophie Huckfield is a cross disciplinary artist and researcher with a background in arts, design and engineering.

Polly Brant is an artist and educator who explores the everyday and ways of learning.