Weird Hope Engines: Critical Hits Zine Fair
Saturday 22nd March / 11am-5pm
Bonington Gallery, Nottingham

As we approach the launch of Weird Hope Engines at Bonington gallery, curated by David Blandy, Rebecca Edwards and Jamie Sutcliffe, under their new art games research moniker Dying Earth Catalogue, we're happy to announce a day of talks, tables, and screenings celebrating the cultures of tabletop roleplaying games.

Book your free ticket and join us at Bonington Gallery for the Critical Hits Zine Fair.

Marking the launch of our next exhibition Weird Hope Engines(22 March – 10 May) this event celebrates DIY publishing and tabletop gaming with vendors from Nottingham and around the UK including Melsonian Arts Council, Copy/Paste Co-op, Warp Miniatures, Ramshackle Games and others. Critical Hits Zine Fair brings together independent publishers, artists, and writers exploring themes of critical worlding, resistance, and alternative futures.

Alongside a diverse range of zines and collectables to purchase, the Fair also features a programme of talks and conversations with artists from the exhibition including Zedeck Siew and Angela Washko, and panel discussions on fantasy illustration, game design and miniature fabrication with Andrew Walter, Amanda Lee Franck, Scrap World, and Alex Huntley.

Critical Hits Zine Fair also features gaming sessions with David Blandy, Angela Washko and Andrew Walter, as well as a film screening programme delving further into the narratives, aesthetics, and communities that shape these immersive worlds, including the documentaries World of Darkness (2017) and Eye of the Beholder: The Art of Dungeons & Dragons(2019).

Image: Still from the film World of Darkness, 2017

EVENT ALERT! 🇹🇷
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"Diachronic" – A Creative Collaboration
Wednesday 12 March, 6 – 7.30pm

John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
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Join us for an in conversation around artist @david_blandy_'s project "Diachronic”, a creative collaboration between John Hansard Gallery and @canakkalebienal, Turkey. With David Blandy, Çanakkale Biennial Curators Deniz Erbaş and Ulrika Flink, and Founding Director Seyhan Boztepe.
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“Diachronic” is a TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game) that was commissioned for the 9th Çanakkale Biennial, 4 October – 11 November 2024, in collaboration with John Hansard Gallery and with support from the British Council’s Creative Collaboration Grant. Extending from David Blandy's exhibition Atomic Light at John Hansard Gallery in 2023, “Diachronic” continues his interest in imagining new worlds and societal systems collaboratively.
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There will also be the opportunity to hear more about the history of the Biennial, its context, and its wider activities. This event has been made possible with the support of British Council Creative Collaborations Programme.
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The event will be in English with Turkish translation.

@turkeybritishcouncil @ulrikaflink @deniz.erbas @seyhanboztepe @troyexcavations @troiavakfi @troyamuzesi @britishcouncil

Archaeology-Heritage-Art Research Network

AHA EVENT #19 : David Blandy | Other Worlds Workshop

Wednesday 26th February 14:00 - 17:00

Join us for ‘Other Worlds’, a workshop exploring archives, archaeology, sites and ideas through tabletop roleplay techniques. David Blandy will guide us through his use of worlding, speculative fiction and games in his artistic practice.

The workshop is free and open to all, No experience with table top gaming necessary. Refreshments will be provided.

To register for the workshop please email: nastassja.simensky.20@ucl.ac.uk

Address:

Slade Art Research Centre
Woburn Square
London

WC1H 0AB

Location:
Google Maps / What 3 words

LA Filmforum / PST Art Screening Series:
Experimentations: Imag(in)ing Knowledge in Film
Science of the Word

Science of the Word
Sunday Feb 16, 2025
7:30 PM
2220 Arts + Archives 2220 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90057 (map)
www.2220arts.org

Buy Ticket

Science of the Word

Aimé Césaire, the late writer, politician, and co-founder of the Négritude movement, proposed a new hybrid science in 1946 — a science of the Word. He argued that the study of the Word (mythoi, a poetics of knowledge) will condition the study of nature (bios). Philosopher Sylvia Wynter, inspired by Césaire’s idea, stated that humans must now collectively undertake a rewriting of knowledge as we have known and understood it. Can science deal with and make sense of the human predicament, as Wynter calls it? How can scholars, artists, scientists, and the general public reconcile the tension between scientific and technological advancement, the earth-centered mandate of indigenous wisdom, and righting historical legacies colonial violence?  

Curated by Jheanelle Brown.

Film Screening: Erin Espelie, Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil& Jackson Polys, Mariam Ghani, Laura Huertas Millán, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy

LA Film Forum

PST ART: Art & Science Collide

Kadeem Oak: Pressed Flowers of the Empire

Screening Room: South Wing
Thu 06 Feb 2025

18.45 - 20.45

£5 Book Tickets here

Part of Somerset House Studios

Artist and filmmaker Kadeem Oak explores the colonial legacies of Britain’s botanical collections.

Featuring: Black Audio Film Collective, Kew and Me, The Work of Kew Gardens, David Blandy, Lamin Fofana, Jonn Gale

Reflecting Oak’s ongoing research into ecology, migration and the Caribbean, the screening focuses on the botanical garden as a form of living archive. Oak invites critical conversation around Britain’s imperial institutions, drawing on material connected to Kew Gardens. The screening considers the mediation of monuments and archives and how their colonial logics might be disrupted through contemporary intervention.

Archaeology-Heritage-Art Research Network (AHA) EVENT

David Blandy | ‘Other Worlds’ Event #18
Online talk
Wednesday 29 January, 16:30 - 18:00

This talk will explore the potential for exploring archives, sites and ideas through tabletop roleplay techniques. David Blandy will talk through his use of worlding, speculative fiction and games in his artistic practice, and the collaborative creation of works such as The World After and Lost Eons.

This talk is free and open to all. We will be hosting the event via zoom.

Please register HERE

There will be an in person workshop connected to this talk on Wednesday 26th February in London. To register for the workshop please email: nastassja.simensky.20@ucl.ac.uk

The Archaeology-Heritage-Art Research Network examines the varied ways in which archaeology, heritage and art converge across a broad range of concepts and practices, from artistic interventions in the museum space to archaeological interpretations which deploy and take inspiration from contemporary art.

Air Divinations: Collective Enquiry

With artists Nick Murray, David Blandy, Jesse Jones & Forms of Circulation

When: 3 December 2024 / 9.45am-18:30pm

Where: University of Westminster and Northwick Park Hospital.

Price:Free to all! / Book here

The final of four “divinations” created to inform the creation of the Brent Biennial 2025. A one-day programme structured around air, featuring workshops and collective imagining.

Why Air?

A catalytic substance of ignition; breath symbolises life. Air/breath also represents the power of utterance; declaration, song, whistles, chants, spells, of mobilising ideas and knowledge, people and animals. An intangible, invisible force that creates frameworks such as culture, education, legal systems, religion and ideologies.

The four elements: the foundations of our collective enquiry

(Re)building requires the four elements. Earth, water, fire and air form the basis of many ancient philosophical systems; they are the essential ingredients in the alchemical processes of creation and transformation. Each element symbolises and energises a deeper understanding of different facets of existence. When combined, these essential elements have the potential to reconfigure our understanding of structures and knowledge, and help us to remake our world.

Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA

[...], A film programme, curated by Astria Suparek 
Saturday, Nov. 30, 2024, 2–5 p.m 

Screening with work by David Blandy, Jesse Chun, Camille Henrot, Jonelle Twum, Suneil Sanzigiri & Lu Yang

Part of the 2024 Film Series introducing 52 films and time-based works by 48 directors and artists in the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater.

Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Esker Foundation, Canada
Friday, November 15th 2024 @, 7-10pm

Join us for an in-gallery tabletop rpg game night and play Gathering Storm: A Collaborative World-Building Game by UK artist David Blandy.

Register for this Program »

Gathering Storm is a collaborative world-building game that 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.

Serpentine and Nowadays present David Blandy’s Alien Pastoral: The Strain at COP16 as part of Plant Lab: MOTH (More Than Human Rights) in Cali, Colombia

Plant Lab: MOTH (More Than Human Rights) is a participatory design session that brings together people, plants, and the planet to imagine a greener future. This plant-led lab will include playing David Blandy’s new role-playing tabletop game Alien Pastoral: The Strain, first presented at Serpentine as part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon.

Participants will receive tools for including nature in their boardrooms, delegations, and policymaking spaces. Supported by interactive works, this part-workshop, part-community round table will look at alternative models for how to centre the rights of nature and build a better world. 

In partnership with the Serpentine and Nowadays. With thanks to Kalpana Arisas, founder of Nowadays & Symbi0cene , & Serpentine Curators: Lucia Pietroiusti & Daisy Gould

Critical Acts: Performance Lectures exploring how power operates in the digital age

9th of October between 6-9pm 
School of Digital Arts, Manchester
Reserve your free place

Our Critical Act artists are:

Nina Davies
Nina Davies is a Canadian-British artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture and how it is disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed.

Michael-Jon Mizra
Michael-Jon Mizra (he/him) is a computer musician based in London, interested in how programmatic thinking, data-structure management, and algorithmic modelling can be used to compose and perform.

Petra Szemán + David Blandy
Petra Szemán (they/them) is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like landscapes. David Blandy (he/him) is an artist examining global structures of control and networks of resistance, in areas as diverse as ecology, history and science to arenas of play.

Image Credit: The Deluge, James Ferraro at AND Festival 2017. Photo taken by Chris Foster

Critical Acts is an immersive gathering and a platform for surveying emerging net and digital cultures through performance lectures.

Seeds
Part of Serpentine Gallery - the Infinite Ecologies Marathon

Venue: The Magazine Serpentine North Gallery 28 September 2024
12-5pm Price: £20, £15 conc.

NB: Please arrive on site for 11.45am.

We have a limited number of free tickets available for anyone who cannot pay the ticket price, please email: information@serpentinegalleries.org for more information.

Book here

Artists: David Blandy, Exodus Crooks, Lucia Pizzani and Jumana Manna with Chef, Moonhyung Lee

Join us for Seeds, an extended lunchtime programme addressing worlding through the lens of ecology, part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon.

Continuing the legacy of The Magazine Sessions, Seeds delves into the multifaceted significance of seeds as vehicles for world building. Beyond their role in food production, seeds carry history, memory and serve as potent metaphors for growth, ideas and exchange.

This extended lunchtime series aims to create space to discuss the complex narratives embedded within seeds and their ecological and imaginative potential. Seeds invites participants to envision new commons and methods of knowledge exchange through the embodied experience of communal eating, sharing dishes created in close collaboration with the artists. We invite diners to engage with seeds as nourishment and a catalyst for critical dialogue.

Seeds will facilitate four artist-led activations at a communal table to explore the revolutionary potential of food in reshaping our relationships to our environments and each other. The participating artists, David Blandy, Exodus Crooks, Lucia Pizzani and Jumana Manna, were invited to work with chef Moonhyung Lee, Sous Chef at the world’s first zero-waste restaurant, Silo, to develop dishes to complement their contributions.

Image credit: Lucia Pizzani. Corn and Clay, Courtesy the artist.

Serpentine Gallery

Free Live Event

Alien Pastoral: The Strain - David Blandy
Part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon
Serpentine Gallery

Venue: The Magazine Serpentine North Gallery
27 September 2024, 2pm Free 

Join us for the first event of this weekend series exploring worlding and life cycles through the lens of ecology. Part of the Infinite Ecologies Marathon.

You can apply to attend (free) by registering your interest here by Friday, 20 September at noon. Successful applicants will be notified by Tuesday, 24 September.

Experience how relationships and environments change in this open worlding game experience. 

Participants will experience and discuss the worlding potential of gaming while playing David Blandy’s new tabletop role-playing game, Alien Pastoral: The Strain.

Curated by Lucia Pietroiusti, Head of Ecologies, and Daisy Gould, Assistant Curator, Live Programmes. Produced by Isobel Peyton-Jones, Producer.  

Alien Pastoral: The Strain centres on a biological research station, run by an Authority, as the scientists try to engineer a new strain to solve an existential problem. An adaptation of Blandy’s previous work Gathering Storm, this game explores the strange and often blurred spaces between agriculture, technology and capitalism. Players will collaboratively design a research station complete with seedbeds, orchards and laboratories to experience how relationships change with their environments in this open worlding game experience.

You do not need any prior role-playing game experience to participate. The workshop is followed by a feedback session with the artist.

Alien Pastoral: The Strain is a participatory event which involves complex themes, narratives and storytelling; including material around body horror, isolation, loss of autonomy and trauma.

Serpentine Gallery

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.