DIACHRONIC: SALVAGE THE PAST, 2024
DIACHRONIC: Salvage the Past is a new commission by David Blandy for Çanakkale Biennial. A new tabletop game that considers our relationship to the past and its stories, who has access to that past and who writes that history. You play as a time traveller, an Envoy, who has a mission to retrieve artefacts in time periods before a future Explorer has a chance to destroy or pillage them.
Through a series of prompts, the player constructs a vivid world in flux, constantly under threat of collapse, as future catastrophe undermines this fragile time shift. Based on the history of Hisarlik and the city of Troy and the ultimately destructive archaeology of Heinrich Schliemann, the game asks us to consider what has been lost, and how we build new narratives.
Commissioned for the 9th Çanakkale Biennial: LET TIME RUN ITS COURSE; organized by CABININ – Çanakkale Biennial Initiative, October 4th - November 11th 2024, Korfmann Library/Troia Foundation, Çanakkale, Turkey.
Curated by Ulrika Flink & Deniz Erbas
With thanks to Prof. Rustem Aslan
Supported by The British Council in partnership with John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK
Installation view: DIACHRONIC: Salvage the Past, David Blandy, 2024; CABININ-Çanakkale Biennial, 2024
Photo: Saygın Mavinil