In conversation: David Blandy and Dr. Merline Evans, Chaired by Jamie Sutcliffe
David Blandy will be joined in conversation with local writer and researcher Dr. Merline Evans, chaired by writer Jamie Sutcliffe, to discuss his new film, exhibition and table-top roleplay game ‘The World After’, currently on view at Focal Point Gallery until 26 January 2020.
16 November 2019 / 2.00pm to 3.30pm / The Pod
This event will take place in the Pod at South Essex College, a few minutes walk from Focal Point Gallery on Luker Road, SS1 1ND.
The Pod, South Essex College
Luker Road
Southend-on-Sea
SS1 1ND
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Tickets are £4 each with concessions available. This event is free to all students of South Essex College. Book yourself a place here.
‘The World After’ is a fictional tale which imagines a world after the Anthropocene era, a time in which humanity’s activities had detrimental effect on earth’s climate and environment. In this future world, human influence on the planet has faded following a catastrophic man-made ecological crisis, with those who remain having to find new ways to survive and form kin. ‘The World After’ takes inspiration from the unique post-industrial setting of Canvey Wick on Canvey Island, Essex.
As well as a new film and exhibition, Blandy has worked closely with gaming communities in Essex to create a new table-top roleplaying game. With creatures based on local wildlife and myth, the game follows a collective story that imagines new ways of living together.
Dr. Merline Evans is a writer and researcher based in Southend-on-Sea. Her field of research is the critical history of human origins, informed by theoretical perspectives from the emerging field of animal studies. This is intended as a contribution towards a multi-species archaeology that moves beyond anthropocentric ideology and Cartesian binaries to acknowledge the agency and subjectivity of other beings in our accounts of the past. With a long-standing interest in table-top roleplaying games, Evans develops her own roleplaying game campaigns and is co-author of ‘The World After’ with David Blandy.
Jamie Sutcliffe is a writer and co-director of Strange Attractor Press (distributed by The MIT Press). His essays, reviews, and interviews have been published by Art Monthly, Frieze, Rhizome, The White Review, EROS Journal, Bricks From The Kiln and The Quietus, while catalogue essays have been commissioned by the New Museum, New York, the Austrian Cultural Forum, London, and Primary, Nottingham amongst others. He has presented talks, chaired symposia and performed texts at The V&A, Wysing Arts Centre, Jerwood Space, Camden Arts Centre, Somerset House, IMT Gallery and Site Gallery amongst others and is a regular contributor to the Art Monthly Talk Show on Resonance FM. He edits BERSERKER, a journal of genre studies, outlandish comics, and science fiction published by Breakdown Press, alongside the forthcoming Strange Attractor Press Journal. Recent curatorial projects include The Psychopathic Now! at Flat Time House, London, The Shadow Moses Incident at Primary, Nottingham, and a forthcoming exhibition exploring the clandestine politics of Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series at Southwark Park Galleries and Dilston Grove in 2020