ArtReview: March Issue 2024

Added on by Claire Blandy.

ArtReview March 2024

For ArtReview’s latest artist project, David Blandy and Jamie Sutcliffe have developed a solo journaling game called ‘Weird Hope Engines, or; A Choking Dust… Red, Clotted and Awful’.

To set the scene, the game takes place at the end of the twenty-first century. In this time, science fiction has lost all ethics, the Earth’s ecosystem has collapsed, along with it all systems of government, but you have the chance to start life anew on a nearby planet. You board a ship and are tasked with ‘establishing new ways of being’.

 
 

Jamie Sutcliffe is a writer, curator, and co-director of Strange Attractor Press. His work explores artistic encounters with science fictive fabulation, the politics of gaming, animation and its multiple entanglements with developments in the life sciences, haunted media, the digital uncanny, and the persistence of myth, all understood as technologies of selfhood.

He is the editor of Documents of Contemporary Art: Magic, published by The Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, and his essays, reviews, and interviews have been featured in Art Monthly, Frieze, The White Review, Rhizome, Art Review, The Quietus, Art Agenda, Bricks From The Kiln, and IsThisIt, amongst others.
@intron_depot

Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Areas Of Effect: Planar Systems, Critical Roles, and Gaming Imaginaries
A one-day symposium on Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPGs) with live game sessions at ayrebyte

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.

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

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

The Couch - Future Artefacts FM / Podcast episode

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Image credit: Damian Griffiths, courtesy the artist and Seventeen Gallery

The Couch / Future Artefacts FM

Hosted by artists Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Apple

Future Artefacts FM are producing a mini-series for Dutch organisation, Het Hem and their online space The Couch on Magic and Technology with a focus on artists that work with soundscapes.

What would you do at the end of the world? For the third part of our collaboration with The Couch, we are thrilled to share David Blandy’s work, The End of The World, a 13 minute audio piece, originating from a larger video installation made in 2017.

Revisiting this work, we explore the ends of multiple worlds; family illness, the foundations of a political system shattering and the end of a 17 year old magical gaming world, Asheron’s Call. When reflected in the present moment, we hear from Blandy about collective grief, and where places of solidarity, like that in Asheron’s call, can help us come to terms with the endings of multiple worlds.

*The Couch, is a digital editorial and arts platform to continue these debates through texts, screenings and online discourse.

https://www.futureartefactsfm.com/

Launch for Trēow of Time, UCL East

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Launch event for Larry Achiampong & David Blandy’s first permanent sculpture commission, Trēow of Time, 2023, A UCL East Public Art Commission

Trēow of Time, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, 2023
A UCL East Public Art Commission

Opens Friday December 1st, 2023 / RSVP here
UCL East, Marshgate, 7 Sidings Street, Stratford, London, E20 2AE  

5:30pm: Drinks reception at Marshgate cafe
6pm: Larry Achiampong & David Blandy will give a short talk in the Lecture theatre on Level One, followed by a Q&A
6:45 - 8:30pm: PV & reception at the main Atrium with refreshments

Please RSVP for the launch on Friday 1st December, please click here.

For their first permanent sculpture commission, Trēow of Time, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy engaged in conversations with UCL academics and responded to the landscape surrounding the new UCL East campus. They have created a hyper-real installation inspired by 3D video gaming and their time spent between the natural and virtual realms. The work was conceived during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it reflects on a time of collective re-discovery of nature as a source of healing and wellbeing, whilst simultaneously highlighting inequalities that exist in access to green spaces.

New artist book

Added on by Claire Blandy.

David Blandy’s new artist book, published by John Hansard Gallery for the exhibition Atomic Light, on until May 6 2023

Available through the gallery bookshop or order through Cornerhouse Publications here: £10

The book also includes a beautiful reminisence by curator and researcher, Annie Jael Kwan, writing about a steaming bowl of juk (rice porridge) and the script for Empire of the Swamp written by playwright and writer Joel Tan, where he imagines a conversation between a crocodile, a lost soldier and an ant; a fable of nature and the repercussions of colonialism.

 

Worldbuilding: Gaming & Art in the digital age

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Worldbuilding Gaming & Art in the Digital Age
Fifteenth-Anniversary Exhibition on Gaming and Art
Julia Stoschek Collection

5 June 2022 – 10 December 2023, JSC Düsseldorf

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist

With works by Peggy Ahwesh, Rebecca Allen, Cory Arcangel, Ed Atkins, Meriem Benanni, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Ian Cheng, Cao Fei, Basmah Felemban, Ed Fornieles, SarahFriend, Kim Heecheon, Institute of Queer Ecology, Rindon Johnson, Keiken, Lawrence Lek, Gabriel Massan, Lual Mayen, Sondra Perry, Jacolby Satterwhite, Frances Stark, Sturtevant, Theo Triantafyllidis, Suzanne Treister, Angela Washko, Lu Yang, among others.

Julia Stoschek Collection
Schanzenstraße 54, 40549 Düsseldorf, Germany

& Centre Pompidou Metz, France / June 2023 - January 2024

Book a ticket for "Androids Dream", Sat June 25, 10am

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Saturday Morning Animation Club

Androids Dream / David Blandy / Sat June 25th / 10am

Online event
Sat, 25 June 2022 / 10:00 – 11:00 AM
Book Tickets here for a screening of ‘Androids Dream’ by David Blandy, followed by an artist's walk through and Q&A with the audience.

In Androids Dream (2022), Blandy deconstructs the cyberpunk aesthetic first prototyped by Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and which has continued to be repeated and become ever more ossified. Formed of multiple simulacra, the work involves Unreal Engine assets, uses Kojima’s Snatcher - itself a replay of Blade Runner in videogame form - and even deploys an algorithmic mimesis of the artist's own voice. Breaking down the aesthetic form, the film in turn breaks down, repeats, refracts, and goes into reverse.

Commissioned by Petra Szemán for On Animatics for Saturday Morning Animation Club

Saturday Morning Animation Club is produced in collaboration with with isthisit? and Off Site Project

Saturday Morning Animation Club is a series of screenings + talks across five weeks between 11 June - 9 July, showcasing films by people who wield the dual powers of being an artist and a nerd. 

Unified by an early fascination and involvement with anime and games, each artist focuses in on the worlds and perspectives fandom allows for. From this angle the five videos broaden ideas of human and non-human perception, screen-based experiences, virtual worlds and alternative ways of being.

Tied together by a refusal to downplay the enthusiasms and generative energy of fandom, Saturday Morning Animation Club will lead viewers through iterations of animatic worlds, on- and off-screen, with or without player input. 

Imagining Disaster - Contemporary Art X Science Fiction, Open Eye, Liverpool

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Imagining Disaster - Contemporary Art X Science Fiction, Open Eye, Liverpool
Watch online conversation with Mike Pinnington, David Blandy, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Basma Ghalayini

Science Fiction has existed as a recognised genre for more than a century. Its emergence, broadly depending on which writer of which story you believe truly marks SF’s origins, runs roughly in parallel with the birth of cinema. From Georges Melies’ fanciful A Trip to the Moon (1902) to Stanley Kubrick’s masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) it has, and continues to, inspire imaginations and audiences to this day. In turn, Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction, is inspired by the genre many of us fell in love with when we were children – via films like Star Wars (1977) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Its other departure point is Susan Sontag’s 1965 essay The Imagination of disaster, in which the critic states: “Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” Earlier in the decade, Chris Marker’s ‘photo-novel’ La Jetée (1962) – with its post-apocalyptic time travel narrative – had demonstrated just that (and so much more besides). In recent years, contemporary artists including, but by no means limited to, Keith Piper, Larissa Sansour, and Larry Achiampong have increasingly borrowed from, leaned into, and otherwise employed the science fiction playbook in their work. Why would this be, and why now? Or perhaps the better question would be: what took visual artists so long? To help provide some of the answers, join us in exploring and addressing these questions and more, in the form of new writing, conversations, and digital takeovers.

Our programme will feature artists, writers, academics and – most importantly – fans of science fiction, all prompted by the brimming possibilities offered by this once niche, sometimes ghettoised genre.

Read a series of blogs by: Stephanie Bailey, Prof. Roger Luckhurst, Dr. Glyn Morgan and Mike Pinnington.

Tune into this online conversation in which the panel discussion with Mike Pinnington, David Blandy, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Basma Ghalayini will discuss the potential of science fiction in the visual arts and further afield.

Follow Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley who’ll be sharing their work and inspirations in a special Open Eye Gallery Instagram takeover.

And watch out for new photography in a special Open Eye Stories responding to the themes of Imagining Disaster.

Imagining Disaster: Contemporary Art X Science Fiction investigates what it is about science fiction – be it in the form of Afrofuturism, dystopia, post-apocalyptic or posthumanism – that inspires and allows us to communicate ideas so eloquently and vividly.

Produced by Mike Pinnington

Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool

Serpentine Gallery: Future Art Ecosystems 2 Live: David Blandy and Larry Achiampong x Alex Boye

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Serpentine Gallery: Future Art Ecosystems 2 Live: David Blandy and Larry Achiampong x Alex Boyes

Join the Serpentine Arts Technologies team and our contributors to Future Art Ecosystems 2 as we discuss the metaverse and the opportunities and challenges facing artists, producers and cultural institutions within an increasingly virtual landscape.

What is the role of the artist within the metaverse? How can they tell stories within increasingly virtual platforms whilst still critiquing relatively new mediums like game engines – what is good virtual art? With new technology comes new production techniques, but also new audience and user expectations that present risks but also opportunities that need to be balanced and responded to within these new user experiences.

Join artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy alongside Serpentine Galleries Research & Development Platform Producer Alex Boyes, as they discuss creative practice across art, film, poetry, performance and music, and how David and Larry have been merging storytelling within game worlds whilst still maintaining a critical art practice.

www.futureartecosystems.org

Networked Futures: : Online Exhibitions and Digital Hierarchies

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Networked Futures: : Online Exhibitions and Digital Hierarchies

Front/Back cover: Keiken + George Jasper Stone, Feel My Metaverse, 2019 (still). CGI HD film (colour, sound), 36 min 23 sec.

Front/Back cover: Keiken + George Jasper Stone, Feel My Metaverse, 2019 (still). CGI HD film (colour, sound), 36 min 23 sec.

Edited and designed by Bob Bicknell-Knight.

The book includes artwork, alongside newly commissioned essays and interviews  from 17 artists, writers and collectives including Larry Achiampong, Morehshin Allahyari, Allyssia Alleyne, David Blandy, Stine Deja, Corey Hayman, Tamara Kametani, Keiken, Maria Mahfooz, Kumbirai Makumbe, Rene Matić, Jonathan Monaghan, Mimi Ọnụọha, Emily Phillips, Jamie Sutcliffe, Wade Wallerstein and Richard Whitby.

The book is the physical manifestation and culmination of a six-month programme of online exhibitions that ran between the 31st October 2020 and 17th April 2021on the predominantly digital platform isthisit?. The programme included four exhibitions, and involved thirteen artists and collectives, as well as commissioned texts by four writers whose essays and interviews with the exhibited artists are included in the book.

The six-month programme revolved around the idea of networks, exposing and exploring the underlying architecture of our daily lives whilst investigating the social, political, digital and hierarchical networks that we reside within. Each exhibition focused on a different area of our networked selves, from reflecting on the commodification and colonisation of people, places and objects, to speculating on a fabricated future where Earth’s climate has collapsed and lives are lived through different hyper-connected digital worlds.

The pages in the book contain archived material from each online exhibition accompanied by the original press releases, essays from the commissioned writers who were tasked with responding to each exhibition and interviews with each artist and collective. The exhibitions are presented in thematic order, beginning with the first show in the programme and ending with the last.

Generously supported by Arts Council England.

Slade alumni to create 'science fiction mothership' at UCL East

Added on by Claire Blandy.

Two internationally respected artists – both UCL alumni from London - have been chosen to create cutting-edge public art for the UCL East campus in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, renowned for their work involving gaming, videos and sculpture, will jointly produce permanent artwork for the UCL East Marshgate building, due to open in September 2023.

The campus will bring together researchers, students, local communities and industry to solve the biggest challenges affecting people’s lives and the planet. Marshgate is one of two new state-of-the-art buildings in development.

Larry Achiampong & David Blandy Portrait Image 1.jpeg

Drawing on their existing collaborative work that shares stories of communal and personal heritage, the duo are aiming to ‘create a work that reimagines Marshgate itself as a science fiction mothership.’

The artists, who studied at UCL Slade School of Fine Art, were selected through a competitive interview process, led by Head of Public Art Sam Wilkinson and the UCL East Public Art Committee.

UCL is one of the few UK universities to have adopted a university-wide public art policy, empowering artists to stimulate interdisciplinary relationships and contribute to the wider understanding of the work of the university, its place in London and the global challenges that UCL research addresses.

formed of the dreams of the life of the building, revealing the inner lives of the people who inhabit the infrastructure during both the day and night.

“Through our research around the site we will examine play’s centrality to creativity and selfhood, how this inspires research and growth in fields as diverse as engineering, robotics, AI and art.

“Through this process we will create new work that expands our investigations into anthropology and science fiction, offering visions that question what a better world might look, feel and sound like.”

David, who studied a Master’s in Fine Art Media at UCL Slade School of Fine Art in 2003, added: “These mythologies will be both collected, through extensive research into cultures from across the world reflected in the local area, and created, through collaboration with the huge range of users of the building, from local communities and research scientists through to artists and fabricators. We will create a work that reimagines Marshgate itself as a science fiction mothership.

“Our practice is collaborative, and we love to invite others into that conversation, building stories together to imagine different possibilities and examine the world around us. Through conversations, writing together and building virtual spaces together, we’ve worked with multiple communities to give a space for people to make self-portraits inside the computer space.”

The UCL East Public Art Programme represents an important part of the university’s support for artist-in-residency activities, artist-academic research partnerships and a commitment to engaging with local communities in a variety of ways.

Last year, east London artist and Slade lecturer Emma Hart was appointed to create artwork for the primary public entrance of the East campus’ Pool Street West building.

Professor Paola Lettieri, Director of UCL East, said: “We are delighted Larry and David will create this important artwork. They were chosen due to their innovative approach to telling people’s stories and how keen they are to engage with complex local communities who can be poorly represented.