Permission Taken, which exhibited at Birmingham Open Media and University of Birmingham between October 2015 - May 2016, focused on copyright, remix culture and ideas around sharing, originality and ownership. In planning the exhibition I was fully aware that these concepts can be quite complex to comprehend and, worse still, incredibly boring, so I devised various ways communicate these ideas . I did so not in order to dumb it down but to give audiences as many entry points as possible. The exhibition featured images, texts, videos, sculptures, documentation of research and workshops. One such workshop was the Exquisite Corpse workshops.
It’s been open since 2nd March and now the second part of Permission Taken, taking place at the Bramall Music Building at University of Birmingham, had its launch event on 7th April from 17:30 – 19:30.
Many thanks to everyone that turned up and heard my short speech and drank all the wine. The exhibition continues at the Bramall Music Building until 30th May.
I’m happy to announce that the second part of Permission Taken will be taking place from 2nd March - 30th May at the Bramall Music Building at the University of Birmingham
This exhibition displays work by Antonio Roberts created during his 2014/15 artist-residency at the University of Birmingham. Roberts focused on issues surrounding copyright, permission culture and art: issues which become ever more pertinent as online communities become more prolific and harder to police.
To celebrate the closing of Permission Taken, on 20th January I’ll be having a closing Remix Party at Birmingham Open Media from 19:00 - 22:00
Artwork from over 20 national and international artists will be projected onto BOM’s walls, floors and ceilings in celebration of artists that appropriate, remix and rework. All this set against a backdrop of Copyleft/cut-up music from Ryan Hughes.
Artists include Dan Hett, Lorna Mills, Ashley James Brown, Shawné Michaelain Holloway, Michaël Borras, Benjamin Berg, Michael Lightborne, Morehshin Allahyari, Daniel Salisbury, Carla Gannis, Faith Holland, Nick Briz, Daniel Temkin, Adam Ferriss, Víctor Arce, Chema Padilla, Kate Spence, Jessica Evans, Emily Haasch
The Archive Remix print pieces are a continuation of the remix pictures that I have been making as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections. The content that I have been making for that has focused on what can be lost when restrictive copyright is enforced. In keeping more with the themes of this exhibition the Archive Remix print pieces focus on the effect of corporate branding on imagery.
On 26th November from 18:00 - 21:00 I’ll be holding the second event as part of my solo exhibition, Permission Taken, at Birmingham Open Media.
In this workshop I’ll introduce concepts behind the exhibition and my knowledge of copyright gained through undertaking a CopyrightX course.
This session encourages artists to think critically about how Copyleft concepts could be applied to their own practice.
Places are free but limited, to reserve places please get in contact.
The Copy Bombs are my way of contributing to the free culture movemnt by encouraging the public to share images, audio, text and video in an unhindered way.
The Copy Bombs are, at their heart, PirateBox installations.
PirateBox creates offline wireless networks designed for anonymous file sharing, chatting, message boarding, and media streaming. You can think of it as your very own portable offline Internet in a box!
Perhaps the most immediately visible piece in my exhibition is the Dead Copyright vinyl wall installation.
Inspiration for this piece came from the Copyright Atrophy project I undertook in 2013. I began to consider how objects, logos and images can be abstracted into basic geometric shapes that eventually become noise. Are they still recognisable when presented in their most simplified form? This is combined with the projection of the glitched logos from the Copyright Atrophy project to create forms that might seem almost recognisible but disappear shortly afterwards.
The Archive Remix video pieces are a continuation of the remix gifs that I have been making as part of my residency at the University of Birmingham’s Research and Cultural Collections. The content that I have been making for that has focused on what can be lost when restrictive copyright is enforced. In keeping more with the themes of this exhibition the Archive Remix video pieces focus on the effect of corporate branding on imagery.