Join us for Digbeth First Friday on October 4, where we will be screening three artists films – ‘Aphonia’ by Sophie Hoyle, ‘Portland Forecast’ by Seo Hye Lee, and ‘I can fit a fist in my mouth’ by Mathew Wayne Parkin.
We bring these three films together as an exploration of the nuances of communication, thinking through how language is translated across the screen, as well as between people, landscapes and timeslips, from one subjectivity to another. Each, in its own way, is a reflection on the agency of language and asks, if there can be resistance in language or its opposite?
Each film has integrated captioning and audio description.
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We’ll be open 6–8pm for a regular First Friday opening, so stop by, watch the films, and join us for a drink. Or if busy First Friday’s aren’t your thing, we’ll also be open 5–6pm for a quiet opening and screening round of the films, where there will be no bar, and we ask all visitors to wear a mask and no perfume.
We will also be open Saturday 5 October from 12-5pm for a daytime viewing of the films and if you would like us to adjust the sound levels or the lighting in the space whilst with us, you can let us know.
The films will also be available online on our website from Friday 4 October till Sunday 6 October.
Alongside the screening, there will be a recorded in-conversation available on our website between the artists and Hannah Wallis (GU co-programme director). This conversation will speak to the integration of audio description and open captions within the work and the creative potentiality of access mediums when developing moving-image work.
The three films together have a total running time of 60 minutes.
Find out more about the films and artists
'Portland Forecast' - Seo Hye LeeOpen accordion
Seo Hye Lee’s moving image piece, ‘Portland Forecast’, explores the nuanced language of weather reporting within the shipping forecast, drawing parallels with the language of captions and the unpredictable nature of weather and communication. Through the use of creative captioning, audio and sound description, the film invites viewers on a voyage to the ocean. Against the ever-changing backdrop of the sea, Lee utilises this dynamic environment as a metaphor, symbolising the delicate balance of uncertainty and comfort inherent in communication.
Portland Forecast was commissioned by Nottingham Contemporary and the Caption Conscious Ecology programme supported by Art Fund
Artist Bio
Seo Hye Lee is a London based South Korean deaf artist. Drawing on her personal experience of hearing loss and of being a cochlear implant user, Seo Hye explores a world of sound and silence through the mediums of drawing, moving image, and multi-sensory installation. Recent works include her moving image piece Portland Forecast,which examines the use of captions in different access modes, Many Shapes of Volume, which explores the physical nature of sound, and How Loud Is Too Loud?, which investigates the use of AI in hearing technology. In her work, Seo Hye aims to promote the use of accessibility and collaboration, frequently finding inspiration in the collective and individual experience of sound.
'I can fit a fist in my mouth' - Mathew Wayne ParkinOpen accordion
‘I can fit a fist in my mouth’ is a video work commissioned by Cubitt gallery for the 2024 exhibition of the same name. The video centres around a group of people, with whom Mathew Wayne Parkin holds varying forms and degrees of intimacy, to audio-describe a series of vignettes, gestures, and brief moments. These have been drawn from a personal archive of footage of family members, ex-partners, lovers, and friends. This is edited with a range of footage exploring forms of interpersonal violence, moments of hiding and revealing, highlighting the ethics of working with personal moments in video.
Artist Bio
Mathew Wayne Parkin is a sodden artist, suspicious writer and sometimes researcher. They often work with experimental moving-image as part of an expanded practice that encompasses exhibition making, relationships, writing and programming. Parkin is particularly interested in autobiography, intimacy and speech. Resisting dominant and professionalised forms of media and moving image production, Parkin embraces DIY and home video techniques, as well as queer crip analysis. Their work is like an armpit, personal and intimate, of the body and relationships – smelling earthy.
They have shared work with Cubitt Gallery; LUX; Videoclub; Book Works; V22 Foundation; IMT Gallery; Grand Union; Workplace Gallery; MAP Magazine, Embassy Gallery; Spike Island; Eastside Projects; Tramway; S1 Artspace; the ICA; and undertaken residencies at Triangle France – Astérides; Hospitalfield Arts; and Cove Park.
You can find out more about Mathew Wayne Parkin via their website.
'Aphonia' - Sophie HoyleOpen accordion
Aphonia (2024)
Aphonia is the medical term for loss of voice, where the artist experienced Selective Mutism (where the inability to speak comes from a psychological condition rather than a physical one) in relation to PTSD. The film explores multiple kinds of languages— colonial, medical, psychiatric—that we are forced to learn and are trying to unlearn, and the inability to communicate experiences of trauma. It explores disability access as a form of translation through Audio Descriptions and Creative Captions, alongside linguistic and cultural (mis)translations, and that which remains untranslatable or beyond language.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella 2024.
Artist Bio
Sophie Hoyle is an artist and writer whose practice relates personal experiences of being disabled, queer, non-binary and part of the SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) diaspora to wider forms of structural inequalities. From lived experience of psychiatric conditions and trauma (or PTSD), they began to explore the history of biomedical technologies in relation to state and military surveillance and control.
You can find out more about Sophie Hoyle via their instagram.
This event is being hosted in collaboration with Radar.