Mixtape #1 by Phil Collins

About

Outburst Queer Arts Festival and Ulster Presents mark the 175th Anniversary of the Belfast School of Art in a new collaboration with one of its most acclaimed graduates.

Phil Collins is a visual artist, filmmaker, cultural organiser, and educator who lives in Berlin and Wuppertal. He is internationally renowned for a socially engaged practice that addresses the intersections of art, politics and popular culture.

Drawing its title and concept from a devotional form of music compilation, Mixtape #1 is a genre-bending collection which brings together a heady blend of episodes, excerpts, off-cuts, and ‘wild footage’ from Phil’s extensive filmography. Notorious for its tendency, and tenderness, towards poetic overture, insinuation and desire, the mixtape foregrounds interactions between form and feeling, and underlines proximities between giver and receiver. Such connections have long characterised Collins’ practice and are revealed here as sustained techniques of production.

Mixtape #1 includes moments from they shoot horses(2004), an endurance dance marathon in Ramallah, Palestine, filmed during the Second Intifada; it channel-surfs across two nights of teleshopping in This Unfortunate Thing Between Us (2011), first performed in Berlin and broadcast live on German public television; and it eavesdrops on karaoke enthusiasts in Bogotá, Istanbul, Jakarta and Bandung, singing The Smiths in the world won't listen (2004-2007).

Elsewhere, excerpts of the melodrama soy mi madre(2008) show Collins’ lush cinematic take on the popular form of the telenovela, shot in Mexico City, and the first of the artist’s films to employ professional actors; while scenes from the long-term collaborative project Desire Lines (2022-ongoing) gesture towards decolonial, queer collectivity expressed through dance, dialogue and performance. Braided together alongside music videos, animations and ephemeral scenes, Mixtape #1 operates in a heterogenous mode of abundance.

A socially engaged artist, community organiser and educator, Phil Collins lived in Belfast in the 1990s and graduated from Ulster University’s Master of Fine Art (MFA) course in 2000, before earning global recognition and, amongst other distinctions, a Turner prize nomination for his practice which addresses the intersections of art, politics and popular culture.

Presented in Outburst Queer Arts Festival 2024 as part of a BSoA 175 Commissioning partnership between Outburst Arts and Ulster Presents, this exhibition will begin a wider collaboration with further details to be announced in Autumn 2024.