GATHERING STORM,2022-24
David Blandy was a UK associate for Delfina Foundation’s The Politics of Food programme, Season Five.
During his residency, David explored the impacts of colonial food production through the development of a new collaborative world-building game - Gathering Storm. His paternal grandfather was part of the Swynnerton Plan in the 1950s, a British Government scheme to gain favour with the black middle class in Kenya, a form of social engineering through agriculture, with the aim of creating an African middle class.
His grandfather taught local farmers how to grow cash crops such as pineapples and green beans, developing very sour pineapples that were suitable for preservation in syrup, for canning and export. David’s grandfather always regretted both the imposition of cash crops and also the introduction of the use of the pesticide DDT. The scheme was a symptom of a wider culture of violent control, as Britain fought to hold onto colonial rule.
Gathering Storm is available to download or purchase here.
Gathering Storm event at Delfina Foundation, London with invited guests: Susuana Amoah, Annie Jael Kwan & Jamie Sutcliffe, Delfina residents and members of the public. Tues 29th November 2022
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. As part of his research for Gathering Storm, Blandy viewed material at the National Archives at Kew and the online British Empire Commonwealth Collection at The Bristol Archives, alongside researching texts by authors such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Wangari Maathai, Ursula K Le Guin and Rachel Carson.
Gathering Storm events have been held recently at Untethered Magic, Nairobi, Kenya; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK; Theatrum Mundi, London, UK and Sussex Digital Humanities Lab (University of Sussex), UK; and as part of exhibition The Seashore of Endless Worlds at Le Commun, Geneva, Switzerland & Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK.
This project is informing a new body of work, that will encompass a new film, game and a publication.
Gathering Storm is a collaborative world-building game.
”Your planet was occupied by an alien force, who brought their customs, rules and an alien fruit. After years of resistance, the occupation has ended, but they’ve left behind this fruit, and everyone holds a secret from those difficult times.”
The game guides the players through adding elements to a map, imagining a postcolonial sci-fi world and then giving a set of characters to inhabit this space through a streamlined standard card-based system. Through a series of prompts, players come to terms with hidden histories and present injustices. No previous experience of tabletop gaming is necessary to play.
Players 1-6
Duration One 1-2 hour session
Requires Paper, pens, a standard deck of cards and a coin.
The game is a completely self-contained GM-less game that teaches the players the rules as they play. Characters are assigned from the face cards, secrets are assigned through the hearts and jokers. The rest of the card deck is used as the oracle, giving prompts for events that happen to the community.
Since 2014, Delfina Foundation’s programme The Politics of Food has worked with artists, activists, agronomists, artisans, bakers, butchers, chefs, economists, farmers, fermenters, foragers, historians, scientists, policy makers, nutritionists and yet more related practitioners, to interrogate the ethics and the global and local politics of food production, distribution and consumption. To date over100 UK and international practitioners have contributed to this programme, through residencies, research and organising opportunities for the wider public to engage and contribute to the programme by way of collective meals, exhibitions, performances, walks, talks, workshops, pickings and a pop-up cafe.
In Autumn 2022, Delfina Foundation launched its fifth season of residencies and public programming focusing on The Politics of Food. As the most pressing issue of our time, this iteration took as its focus the climate emergency, engaging with it through the specific lens of eco-social interdependence. Through a wide range of activities, the programme’s participants took food as their entry point to explore the interconnections between the ecological crisis and our economic, social, cultural, and political crises. The climate emergency is an interdependent one, thus addressing our relation to food and its complex infrastructures is a critical component to the survival of both human and non-human species.
Delfina’s programme partner for Politics of Food was Gaia Art Foundation, an innovative non-profit that facilitates exchange across the fields of art, ecology, science and technology.