Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries
Symposium and live play sessions

Part of Arebyte 2023/24 programme The Body, The Mind, The Soul

Saturday 9 March 2024, 11am - 8:30pm

Artist David Blandy & writer, curator, and co-director of Strange Attractor Press, Jamie Sutcliffe have co-curated ‘Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries’, a day-long event that includes presentations, tabletop game-play sessions and talks.

Speakers at the event include acclaimed RPG designers Emmy Allan, Kayla Dice, Mike Mason, Chris McDowall, Samuel Mui, and Zedeck Siew, alongside writers, historians and theorists such as Stu Horvath, Timothy Linward, Mark Pilkington, and Simon O’Sullivan.

An exhibition of TTRPGs-inspired video games by artists Kitty Clark, Uma Breakdown, John Powell-Jones, Petra Szemán, and Holly White are hosted on computers and available to play for visitors throughout the whole event.

The day culminates in live TTRPG play sessions of the games Eco Mofos by artist David Blandy and SUPERZEROES by TTRPG game designer Samuel Mui, amongst others, inviting the audience to play with a deck of uniquely designed TTRPG playing cards.

The event features a selection of merchandise and publications from Strange Attractor Press and independent London-based bookshop Igloo Tree, Massachusetts-based MIT Press and zine supplier Antipode Zines. Games from Laurie O’Connel and Loot the Room will also be on sale.

Programme info here

Aryebyte

Strange Attractor Press

Image: Artwork from Eco Mofo’s!! by David Blandy & Daniel Locke, Image: Daniel Locke

Gathering Storm: Collaborative world building workshop with David Blandy
Whitechapel Gallery, London
Sat 24 Feb, 12.30-3.30pm
Youth Programme: for participants aged 15-24

Book Here - Free

Join this half day workshop for young people exploring David Blandy’s collaborative world-building game, Gathering Storm, developed from his research around food, agriculture and colonial histories using voice, writing and drawing to imagine new worlds and societal systems collaboratively. Create a community together through collaborative map-making and story-telling.

Whitechapel Gallery

Gathering Storm, David Blandy, 2022. Developed as part of Delfina Foundation’s Politics of Food Season 5 in association with Gaia Art Foundation. 

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse with Larry Achiampong and David Blandy

Saturday 10 February 2024, 13:30 – 17:00 / Free but please book tickets here
Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE

Join us for a free screening of ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ (2018, cert. PG).

Artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy will introduce the film, take you through an activity, and facilitate a discussion. We’ll be talking about science fiction and its relationship to the themes in our ‘Genetic Automata’ exhibition by Larry and David.

Free pizza, popcorn, pick ’n’ mix and soft drinks will be provided.

Doors open at 13:30. The film starts at 14:00.

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy in conversation with Black Cultural Archives’ Managing Director, Lisa Anderson

Friday, 2 February 2024, 18:30 20:00

Black Cultural Archives 1 Windrush Square London, SW2 1EF
Map

Discover the compelling narrative behind the film God_Mode with multi-disciplinary artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy in an exclusive in-conversation event hosted by Black Cultural Archives’ Managing Director, Lisa Anderson. Join us at BCA for an engaging exploration into the roots of deeply ingrained racial ideas in society and the pivotal role of science in shaping these perceptions. Doors open at 6:00 pm.

Live event with David Blandy: Gathering Storms: Origins
Monday 13 November / 6:30-8pm

Places are limited, please reserve a ticket by emailing ftw at forthewin.ch

As part of The Seashore of Endless Worlds, Art & jeux de société
Venue: Le Commun, Building J, 1st & 2nd floor, Rue des Vieux-Grenadiers 10, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland

Curated by FTW: Christian Bili & Samuel Wagen-Magnon

Exhibition dates: 1- 22 November 2023
Open Mon- Sun, 12 -6pm

Gathering Storm: Origins by David Blandy considers the international power dynamics that reach out from Geneva through microcosm, as players devise a single extra-terrestrial community that models different modes of power and control. Players create a community together through collaborative map-making and story-telling, as random prompts take them through a story that evolves towards a radical shift in control. The game facilitates a tale of resistance and making change, told through a culture based around one strange alien fruit. 

Several of the events described in the game are inspired by incidents in which Geneva-based corporations are involved. The writing and worlding takes on the language of Mary Shelley's Geneva-based Frankenstein. 

Game On
Saturday 21 Oct, 1-4pm

Join artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy for an interactive gaming event.

FACT Liverpool
88 Wood Street
L1 4DQ
View on Google Maps

The Box
Drop-in — Free

No booking required, drop by anytime between 13:00 - 16:00.

Artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy host an afternoon of gaming and conversation, inviting you to compete in a series of gaming tournaments, and come together for the joy of play.

We'll have several gaming stations ready for you to take part, and for an added layer of fun, don't hesitate to bring along your personal handheld console!

Kicking off with an introduction from the artists and a screening of their work, Finding Fanon Part Two (2015) the event celebrates how we connect through games and challenges how technology is used to define us.

FACT LIVERPOOL 20th Birthday Talks Programme Join us for a day back-to-back talks featuring artists, collaborators and special guests.
FACT Liverpool 88 Wood Street L1 4DQ View on Google Maps

Fri, 20 Oct
PANEL 3: ARTISTS AT WORK

16:00-17:30
Free, booking essential

Artists Larry Achiampong, David Blandy, Zinzi Minott, Shona Illingworth, Invisible Flock, and Isabel Ramos of Keiken, who have all worked on projects of different scales at FACT, discuss what artists need in terms of support from institutions in the development of their practice, the presentation of work and experimentation with ideas and technologies, and how to meet the challenges the future holds.

Free tickets →

Passing Down, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy in conversation with Subhadra Das & Sasha Henriques & Yomi Ṣode, at Wellcome Collection, London

Friday 15 September 2023, 19:00 – 20:30

Join artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy and panellists, Sasha Henriques & Yomi Ṣode, in conversation with host Subhadra Das about their most recent work, ‘_GOD_MODE_’, featured in their ‘Genetic Automata’ exhibition at the Wellcome Collection London, and how it addresses the legacies of scientific racism and eugenics.

Location: Henry Wellcome Auditorium (Level -1)
Wellcome Collection

In person or Online, please book FREE tickets here:

Venue: Henry Wellcome Auditorium book here for In-venue tickets or

Livestream Event book here for Online tickets

‘Genetic Automata’ will be open to ticket holders before the event, from 18:15–19:00.

Entangled Screening Program / 3pm / August 12th 2023

Part of Seoul International ALT Cinema & Media Festival (NeMaf)

Curated by Ji Yoon Yang, Director of Alternative Space LOOP

Venue: KT&G SangSangMadang Theater

Worlds: An afternoon of conversation about roleplay games

Speakers: Marc Gascgoine, David Blandy, Jamie Sutcliffe, Jamie Harper

Wednesday 26th July from 1pm to 6pm. Leicester Gallery, De Montfort University

Worlds has been developed by Leicester Gallery and The Leicester Centre for Contemporary Writing at De Montfort University. The event is free, to reserve a place or for further rinfomration please email leicestergallery@dmu.ac.uk

All the Birds Sing Bass at Nottingham Contemporary is a convening exploring strategies of speech and spaces of listening.

Taking place over the week of 19-25 June, All the Birds Sing Bass features performance, conversation, music, workshop and screening with contributions by Annie Goh, David Blandy, Jake Mehew, Chooc Ly Tan, Vibeke Mascini & Ella Finer, Fleur Melbourn & Tirzah, Steven Feld, Ufuoma Essi, Noor Abed, Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, Jol Thoms, amongst others.

Curated by: Canan Batur, assisted by Philippa Douglas

Join artist David Blandy in World-Building x Tabletop: Gathering Storm to explore the impacts of colonial food production through his new collaborative world-building game, Gathering Storm.

Sun 25 Jun, 1pm–3pm Book Now

For the past few years, David has been experimenting with the form of group world-building; using voice, writing and drawing to imagine new worlds and societal systems collaboratively.

For this session we will explore collective world-building, using table top role-play techniques to think about how we can use these forms to expand ideas around society and history.

Gathering Storm was developed at Delfina Foundation's Politics of Food programme in association with Gaia Art Foundation in 2022.

All the Birds Sing Bass
Nottingham Contemporary
Mon 19 Jun – Sun 25 Jun

The Art of Machinima
Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Norway

Thursday 11.05.23 / hr. 18:00-19:40 / Tickets

Film program and Q&A in collaboration with Oberhausen Short Film Festival

Machinima is an innovative and ever-changing form of filmmaking where video games or game engines are employed to create animated movies and other forms of visual media.

This year's edition of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival in Germany presented Against Gravity. The Art of Machinima, an extensive program curated by Vladimir Nadein and Dmitry Frolov that delved into some of the most compelling aspects of Machinima.

In collaboration with the festival, we hereby present its first section, Hold the Controller, a program that examines how filmmakers address questions regarding the relationship between the body, identity and the game apparatus.

With an introduction and Q&A with Vladimir Nadein and Dmitry Frolov.

Kunstnernes Hus

Theatrum Mundi: Gathering Storm - David Blandy

Wednesday Apr 19 2023 / 6-9pm

Venue: Stanley Arts, 12 South Norwood Hill, London, SE25 6AB

A new workroom series introducing questions of world-building through creative practice as an act of world-building in its own right.