Open File 1

<p>An A4-format cumulative publication was produced and released sheet-by-sheet throughout our first series of four events hosted at Grand Union in Birmingham.</p> <p>The first in the Open File series at Grand Union, <em>Echoes (Disambiguation)</em> was an evening of sound performances and sonic explorations of the Grand Union project space. Audible and inaudible frequencies, waves and signals permeate the space setting up slippages between the aural, the physical, the perceptible and the invisible.</p> <p>The <em>Pavilion</em> was a research project into the relationship between contemporary Culture and Capitalism. The research focuses on spatial politics and production, centred around cultural production and immaterial labour. The works critically interrogate the relationship to the exhibition and the factory, the politics of artistic production in this relationship.</p> <p>Open File’s third event at Grand Union took the form of a weekend walk from the gallery on the bank of the River Rea, along the Grand Union canal to St Philip’s Cathedral in the centre of Birmingham. An accompanying visual essay helped guide conversation about the future use of the area, whilst Dallas Simpson’s binaural recording captured a mixture of discussion and incidental ambient sound for inclusion in the Open File archive.</p> <p>For the fourth and final event in the Open File series at Grand Union a selection of video works concerned with the rendering of virtual space, digital excess and notions of the immaterial were screened. From structuralist interrogations of digital media to explorations of the web, the works presented strived to circumscribe the boundaries of the real and perform transitions between the physical and the virtual.</p>