Jack Arts

MIF: Captioning the City

As part of 2021’s Manchester International Festival, we helped bring Captioning the City to life, a huge, city-wide art installation by California-born, Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim. Physically and poetically interpreting Manchester, its past, its present and its future, the commission showed how we can perceive and recognise the places we occupy, translating individual experiences into universal understandings.

Consisting of giant, monochrome captions, we installed the artwork onto some of the city’s biggest landmarks, including the National Football Museum, YES MCR and Manchester Arndale. Whether sought out or discovered just by chance, each one invited people to consider their own experiences of Manchester, and provoke them to re-examine the city in a different light.

Inspired by how the city stirs us, how it’s shaped in memories, and the emotions it provokes, we brought the project’s powerful, playful and political messages to life on the streets. Drawing on her own life experiences and understanding of Deaf culture, Christine’s taglines encapsulated Manchester through a brand-new dimension.