Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants.
In 2018 I completed a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway University, where I carried out the first in-depth study of the history and practice of community video in the UK. I currently run the public programme for the London Community Video Archive, at Goldsmiths College, University of London. My research and film practice have resulted in opportunities to present, exhibit and publish my work nationally and internationally.
In 2012, I spent a year working on Move:Together a film and dance project at South London Gallery. In 2013, at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival I presented the video project ReFramed Youth, this same year, I co-edited Derek Jarman’s Sketchbooks (Thames & Hudson). In 2014, on a British Council Residency in LA, I made a new video project with Echo Park Film Centre. In 2015, I was LUX writer in residence and exhibited the People Make Videos project at The Showroom Gallery. In 2016, I co-curated the Artist Moving Image Festival, Tramway, Glasgow, published an article for the Liverpool Biennial journal and began a new commission for Studio Voltaire, London.
In 2017, I published an article on early video art in the UK for MIRAJ and a chapter on 1970s Community Video in Other Cinemas: Politics, Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s (IB Tauris), edited by Laura Mulvey and Sue Clayton. In 2017/2018 I presented iterations of my video project about Section 28, We Have Rather Been Invaded, at Ryerson, Toronto and Common Guild, Glasgow as well as part of a national touring program called Staying Out:2018, funded by the Arts Council. I was commissioned by Invisible Dust to make a film with Scottish island communities, touring 10 Scottish venues in the Highlands and Islands, including DCA, Dundee, throughout 2018/19.
In 2018, I co-programmed a series of screenings at the ICA pairing videos by contemporary artists with archival films. I also had an exhibition at Focal Point Gallery, which was reveiwed for Frieze. In autumn 2018, I returned to South London Gallery to carry out a new commission called The Archive is Political and commenced research on a new project about Community Land Trusts in Milton Keynes, commissioned by MK Gallery.
In 2019 I worked with Collective Gallery in Edinburgh to develop a new group, which will be led by young people interested in art and questions of representation. I also developed a new video project about direct action in collaboration with Waltham Forest Borough of Culture and Art Night. For the month of October in 2019 I co-curated an exhibtion with LUX in London and the LCVA entitled ‘All you need’s an excuse’. Whilst on residency at Hospitalfield, in autumn 2019 I began work on a new book as part of a Paul Mellon Fellowship with the working title ‘Video Activism Before the Internet’. In 2020, the book was taken up by the BFI/Bloomsbury as part of their Screen Stories series with the title ‘The Story of Video Activism’. Also in 2020/21, I am working with Grand Union, Birmingham, LUX Scotland, Nottingham Contemporary and Rule of Threes, Liverpool on a new project looking at the role of video in response to the housing crisis under the title ‘Forming a Resident’s Association’, which was referenced in Freize Magazine here and here. At the same time, in collaboration with Serptentine Gallery, I am developing a new project with Portman Early Chilhood Centre with the working title ‘Like Coming Home’.
In 2021, Bloomsbury republished the BFI Film Classics ‘Caravaggio’ by Leo Bersani and Ulysse Dutoit, for which they invited me to write a foreword, reflecting on the film in the context of Jarman’s Life and Work. The Paul Mellon Centre made a video about my research into AIDS activist video, which I aslo presented at the Photographer’s Gallery and at the BFI by the Independent Cinema Office. This same year I started working on the Bexley Three Rivers Project, which is an ongoing project that has included editing a community newspaper, The Bexley Responder, the first edition of which is due for publication in November 2022. This has continued in 2023, with the invitation to reflect and respond as the program grows and changes.
In 2022 I was invited to make a new work for the second edition of the Brent Biennial in collaboration with Mosaic LGBTQ+ Trust. Which has been installed in Wilesden Green Library as a public artwork for the three month duration of the Biennial and it was written about in the Guardian Newspaper and Art Review.
In 2023 I have been working on A Bedroom for Everyone, a documentary animation and series of exhibtions/events at Grand Union, Birmingham, Serpentine Gallery, London and Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne. In 2024 this project will have a solo presentation in London at Peer Gallery and will be screened at Manipulate Arts Festival in Edinburgh and as part of a series of workshops at The Newbridge Project in Newcastle. The project stems from a long-term body of work that asks what the role of filmmaking is in response to the current housing crisis in the UK. The film explores the power of grassroots activism and organising in the face of this ongoing emergency; whilst making space for the camaraderie that unfolds in the community centres and meeting halls where this work takes place. Following time spent with housing and migrant-support groups from Glasgow, Nottingham, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, filmmaker I collaborated with members of these groups to co-write the script for this new animation, illustrated by lead artist Sofia Niazi and animated by Astrid Goldsmith.
Since 2020 I have been a senior lecturer on the BA Film and Screen Studies course at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, where I lead units on Curating, Collaboration and Creative Technologies. I am also currently on the board of Achemy Film and Arts.
Contact: edwebbingall [@] gmail.com
Current Projects:
A Bedroom for Everyone, Solo Exhibition, Peer Gallery, London, Feburary 2024-May 2024
We Have Rather Been Invaded, Group Show, Queer Photo Melbourne, Wyndham Art Gallery, Melbourne
Three Rivers Bexley, in residence to reflect and respond as the program grows and changes.
BFI Screen Stories: The Story of Video Activism, Ongoing, BFI/Bloomsbury
The London Community Video Archive
Trustee, Alchemy Film and Arts
Recent Past Projects:
A Bedroom for Everyone, Festival Screening, Manipulate Arts, Edinburgh, Resistance through Storytelling, Feb 2024
A Bedroom for Everyone, Screening, Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, January 2024
A Bedroom for Everyone, Screening Event and Workshop with Food & Solidarity, The Newbridge Project, January 2024
A Bedroom for Everyone, Solo Exhibition, VOLT Gallery, Devonshire Collective, Eastbourne, November 2023-February 2024
A Bedroom for Everyone, Solo Exhibition, Grand Union Birmingham, Sept-Dec, 2023
Burning Illusions: British Film and Thatcherism, Section 28: Spoken Histories and Queer Defiance, National Gallery of America, Washington, March 2023
Community Cable Television in the 1970s, Raven Row/Bishopsgate Institute, March 2023
Forming a Residents Association, Grand Union, Birmingham,LUX, Scotland and Nottingham Contemporary,Nottingham, ongoing
Guest post on hivgraphiccommunication.com
Growing up Brent at London Metropolitan Archives 20th annual LGBTQ+ History and Archives Conference, December 2022
The Bexley Responder, Community Newspaper, Three Rivers Bexley, Editor, November 2022
Tapes Under the Bed: Exploring endangered film & video archives of the 1980s onwards,Guest Speaker, IMMA, Dublin, November 2022
Housing for All/A Bedroom for Everyone, discussion screening, Grand Union, Birmingham, September, 2022
Like Coming Home, Part of Changing Play at Serpentine, January 2020 - Ongoing
Counter-Archives – Non-Aligned Archives, Cinenova, London Community Video Archive & Sam the Wheels, Panel Discussion, Open City Documentary Film Festival, London, September 2022
GAPS IN THE ARCHIVE: A DAY OF EVENTS TELLING THE LGBT+ (HI)STORY OF BRENT, September 2022
Onyeka Igwe: The Miracle on George Green, Chair and accompanying video, September 2022
The second edition of the Brent Biennial, In the House of my Love, Feature Project, Metroland Cultures, July 2022
JEAN CARLOMUSTO MADE ME QUEER: VIDEO ACTIVISM, QUEER ARCHIVES AND AIDS CRISIS REVISITATION, conference presentation, The Department of Theater, Film, and Media Studies at Goethe University Frankfurt, July 2022
Home Video: A Conversation on the Role of Video in Current Housing Struggles, Serpentine Art and Ideas, May 2022
Archive Screening Days 2021, DO NOT TAPE OVER screening, Independent Cinema Office, BFI, London, December 2021
Organising a Film Tour with Lucy Parker, Open City Documentary Festival, September 2021
More than a circle of chairs: A collaborative video workshop, Open City Documentary Festival, September 2021
THE GARDEN: Nature Is not Natural. AIDS, Collectivity, Radioactivity
Talk + Screening, Silent Green, Berlin, August 2021
Grassroots: Artmaking and Political Struggle,Do not Tape Over: AIDs Activist Video in the UK, Conference, Cambridge, April 2021
Pedagogy Roundtable, British Art History in Practice, Paul Mellon Doctoral Researchers Network, April 2021
We Have Rather Been Invaded, Screening and Discussion, Book 28, March 2021
Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation: From Here To Eternity (Sunil Gupta), Photographer’s Gallery, Symposium, March 2021
Forming a Residents Association – The Role of Video in Response to the UK Housing Crisis, Document Film Festival, Glasgow, Jan 2021
Alchemy Film and Arts: Archive, Verb, online symposium with breakout discussion groups, December 2020
Dream. Snap. Freedom: Radical Play Through Photography, Panel Discussion on LGBTQ+ activism with guests Ed Webb-Ingall & Isobel Van Dyke, Four Corners, London, November 2020
ARCHIVES FOR EDUCATION: OPENING UP THE ARCHIVES TO YOUNG FILMMAKERS
A one-day online symposium, September 2020
Imagining political education: A screening series, The World Transformed, September 2020
Fortnightly Highlight 5: What Would You Make A Video About?, The Showroom Gallery, June 2020
CCA STREAMS – We Have Rather Been Invaded, CCA Goldsmiths, June 2020
LOOKING, SEEING, SHOWING, Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, March 2020 - POSTPONED
DO NOT TAPE OVER: AIDS Activist Video In The UK, With Theodore Kerr, UnionDocs, New York, March 2020 - POSTPONED
Video Activism in London: 1969–1993, Fellows Lunch, Paul Mellon Centre, London, April 2020 - POSTPONED
Queer Film Screening: We Have Rather Been Invaded, Category is Books, Glasgow, Scotland, February 2020
(Un)mapping the City: Music Videos and Beyond – Screening and Discussion, London College of Communication, 2020
‘doing your homework – eating your dinner – drawing a picture’, Flattime House, London, 2020
DELPHINE SEYRIG AND HER LEGACY, Symposium: Between Cinema and Video Activism, Institut français, London, 2020
Book Launch: The Last Gay Liberationist by Michael Bronski, Gay’s the Word, London, 2019
12th OURMedia Conference:Mediactivism – Scholactivism, Brussels, 2019
each person houses parts of others (2), LUX Scotland, Screening, Glasgow, 2019
KEITH HARING: ART AND ACTIVISM IN 1980s NEW YORK, conference, Tate Liverpool, 2019
An Introduction to The London Community Video Archive, Barbican, London, 2019
each person houses parts of others (1), LUX Scotland, Screening, Inverness, 2019
LCVA & Mosaic LGBT Youth present: Framed Youth: Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, LUX, London, 2019
Forming a Residents’ Association: Study day, LUX, 2019
All you need’s an excuse, Exhibtion, LUX, London, 2019
Out in the Forest, Waltham Forest Borough of Culture, 2019
Playback: Community Video In South London, CCA Goldsmiths, London, 2019
Radical Film: community and collective film-making - working methods, funding and distribution, BECTU Freelancers Fair, London, 2019
Direct! Action! Art Night London, 2019
Meeting in Process, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, 2019
Direct! Action! Protest and the Forest, Waltham Forest Borough of Culture, 2019
The Archive is Political, South London Gallery, London, 2018/2019
Lie of the Land, Milton Keynes Gallery, March 2019
How We See the Sea: Exhibition, Dynamic Earth, Edinburgh Science Festival, 2019
How We See the Sea: Film Festival, Timespan, Helmsdale, 2019
Queer Times School, Gallery of Art Glasgow, February 2019
A Process A Proposal A Plan - Masterclass in Community Videomaking, DCA Dundee, January 2019
How we see the see, DCA Dundee, January 2019
LUX Scotland presents: I walk there every day but I never saw it that way + Cladach, GFT Glasgow, January 2019
In conversation with Olivia Plender, ICA London, January 2019
November Film Festival, November 2018
In conversation with Anna Raczynski, Jerwood Space, November
London Community Video Archive screening and workshop, Marseille Undergroud Film Festival, November 2018
We Have Rather Been Invaded (Screening), Cambridge University, October 2018
We Have Rather Been Invaded, Focal Point Gallery, Southend
Notes Towards a Self Image, Pavillion, Leeds
28 lessons I was never taught
FPG Film Club: 'Veronica 4 Rose'