Three images in a composite represent three artists' work. Top left: Seo Hye Lee's film Sound of Subtitles - a hand is inside a stone coloured round pot on a spinning wheel, the insides of the pot are shiny. A subtitle reads: sound of reminiscing. Bottom left: Linda Stupart's film Watershed 2.0 - green plants are growing in the foreground, they look like tall weeds. In the background a blurred image of a person in white, a curled claw with red nails is held ahead of the person. Right of the image: Laura Lulika's Body Building film - a sad android sits in a blue room on a blue block, women's heads grow out of the android's back, their body is made up of body massager tools, which are grey, black, purple and pink plastic. A glowing pink ball is held in the android's scalp massager hand.

/ Online Exhibition

Vital Capacities – Exhibition

Available Now

Vital Capacities is an accessible, purpose-built digital residency space – the resulting exhibition from the June 2021 residencies is showing online now.

Phoenix has been collaborating with Vital Capacities, Film London Artist’s Moving Image Network (FLAMIN) and University of Salford Art Collection to support three artist residencies during June 2021. The residencies have now been completed, and the resulting online exhibition Intertwined is now showing on the site.

View the Vital Capacities exhibition

More information about Vital Capacities

During the June 2021 residency, artists Seo Hye Lee, Laura Lulika and Linda Stupart were invited to explore and develop new work using the Vital Capacities accessible online residency platform. Over the course of the month the artists did research, tested ideas and created new commissions, working with the partners, artists, web designer and digital inclusion specialist. Intertwined is an exhibition of the commissioned work resulting from June 2021’s residency.

Seo Hye Lee was co-commissioned by University of Salford Art Collection, whose experience of working with archives was especially important in contributing to Lee’s new film, [Sound of Subtitles]. Over the month, Lee researched approaches to subtitles and captioning, and how sounds are described or omitted using these tools for increasing accessibility for D/deaf and hard of hearing people. Lee worked with film archives across the country to develop a silent film that invites you, through the captions, to imagine the sounds, and the stories behind them, while provoking the viewer to question the role of captioning.

Laura Lulika’s new work, Body Builder, was co-commissioned by Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network, which includes moving image, music, spoken word, performance and collage. Over the course of the residency, Lulika explored hyperability, mascot bodies, the false binary of healthy/unhealthy, and the absurdity of footballer’s fake foul dives. Lulika has created an interactive collage, combining Frankenstein mascots, pub settings and automobile bodies all with their own tales to investigate.

During the residency, Linda Stupart continued to explore the River Cole, a process begun in 2020, resulting in the work-in-progress film, Watershed (2020). During June 21, Stupart continued to walk and map the River Cole, which has resulted in the creation of an interactive story/game, with images, texts and music; Watershed 2.0: Pandemic CYOA Cyberspace Edition 2021. Stupart’s new work has been co-commissioned by Phoenix in Leicester, who supported them to explore new game-based platforms, including Twine – a programme for making choose your own adventure (COYA) games, with which the new work has been created.

To find out more about how the artworks came about, explore the artists’ studios, where you can see the developments which led to the new work.