Tower Room Exhibition
Ikon shows Training (2008), a video projection by emerging British artist Oliver Beer. This is his first presentation in a public gallery.
Housed in Ikon’s Tower Room, Beer’s work depicts a role-play scenario where a group of young adults are learning to be volunteers for a telephone
counselling service.
The group listens to a woman’s voice as she explains that she was abused as a child. She is reading from a script written by Beer, but the trainees are unaware of this, and as she speaks the camera captures their emotional reactions. The discomforting intimacy of the cinematography makes us voyeurs, as we cannot stop looking and listening.
The Resonance Project
Performance
Saturday 12 June, 5pm – free
Pershore Street Car Park, Pershore Street, Birmingham B5 4RU
Since 2007 Beer has worked on a series of fIlms, sound pieces and performances that use the human voice to stimulate architectural spaces.
Every building has its own particular frequencies at which it will resound as a wine glass sings at the tip of a finger. For Ikon, Beer works with singers from Ex Cathedra to create music from these resonant notes, harmonising with the brutalist architecture of the Pershore Street Car Park.
Organised in collaboration with Ex Cathedra.