PREMIER // FINDING FANON GAIDEN: DELETE
By David Blandy & Larry Achiampong
9 December 2016 // 18.00
Cinemateket, Dronningensgate 16, 0105 Oslo
Entry // Free of charge
PRAKSIS and Mennesker i Limbo (People in Limbo) are pleased to announce the premier of Finding Fanon Gaiden: Delete, a new film by artists David Blandy and Larry Achaimpong. The film will be followed by a panel discussion delving into the film’s production and complex politics addressed by the film, particularly in terms of being paperless in Norway today.
A complex tapestry of true stories of identity and migration, cultural history and social change, Finding Fanon Gaiden: Delete will premier in Oslo at Cinemateket on 9 December 2016. This screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring Blandy & Achiampong and Tor B. Jørgensen (former Bishop, Chair of Mennesker i Limbo) alongside others, to address the film’s making and the complex issues surrounding its moving content.
Produced during a residency at PRAKSIS in Oslo, Blandy & Achiampong worked with Mennesker i Limbo, to tell the important real life stories of three the group’s members. The film subverts the popular computer game Grand Theft Auto V – controversial for its popularisation of violence, sexism and racism – stripping its in game environment of weapons to create a world that offers real insight into the extreme, but often hidden situations that bring people to find themselves in limbo; without papers or rights, far from home.
ABOUT THE FINDING FANON PROJECT //
The Finding Fanon project, a collaboration between Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, is inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon, (1925-1961) a radical humanist who dealt with the psychopathology of colonization and the social and cultural consequences of decolonisation. This has evolved from research into a performance, a series of video works and exhibitions. The first film was screened as part of BFI's London Film Festival in 2015 and the Finding Fanon trilogy will be screened at Tate Modern, London on 6 December 2016.
Throughout the series, the artists negotiate Fanon’s ideas, examining the politics of race, racism and decolonisation, and how these societal issues affect our relationship amidst an age of new technology, popular culture and globalisation. Investigating cultural adaption and how globalisation masks divisions and encourages a homogenisation of behaviour, the Finding Fanon series becomes a search for authenticity in a radically interconnected yet ambiguous world.
The two artists, while collaborating, acknowledge the history that has shaped their present interactions, as this conflict is played out through scripts that meld found texts and personal testimony. Navigating hidden, traumatic stories that connect their past, present and future, the two artists question the promise of globalisation and new technologies, recognizing its impact on their own heritages.
Over the past three years, Achiampong and Blandy have exhibited, performed and showcased artworks and projects internationally in spaces such as Tate Modern (London), Fabrica (Brighton), Iniva (London), Modern Art Oxford, Spike Island (Bristol), ICI/Savvy Contemporary (Berlin) and Stony Island Arts Bank (Chicago).
ABOUT BLANDY AND ACHIAMPONG //
Through their work, Blandy and Achiampong examine ideas of communal and personal heritage, using performance to investigate cultural hierarchies and the “fiction of the self”. Blandy and Achiampong have exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally, both individually and as a duo, at venues including Tate, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai; and MOMA PS1, New York.
ABOUT MENNESKER I LIMBO (PEOPLE IN LIMBO) //
People in Limbo is a group of long-term undocumented people who fight for recognition and to tell how difficult the situation of undocumented people is. They aim to be visible in order to improve the situation of undocumented people in Norway.
ABOUT PRAKSIS //
PRAKSIS is an Oslo-based not-for-profit organisation running multidisciplinary residencies that focus on developing creative practices through shared experience and cross-cultural exchange.
