Stay Home: Art in Uncertain Times is an online programme of single screen works selected by the Art Council Collection team and our partners around the UK, presenting a varied selection of film and video works to entertain, amuse and inspire.
Each week during the lockdown period, we'll be uploading a new film to the website for you to enjoy.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter for weekly programme updates and to enjoy other digital highlights from the Collection.
Week 2:
FF Gaiden: Delete
Larry Achiampong and David Blandy
2016 / 33 minutes 9 seconds
Selected by Beth Hughes, Curator
This week, Arts Council Collection Curator, Beth Hughes, selects Larry Achiampong and David Blandy’s FF Gaiden: Delete, 2016:
“I’m interested in hearing the stories of others, learning what other people’s lives are like and what they have to contend with. The accounts given in FF Gaiden: Delete stayed with me long after the film ended as these people have lived through and continue to live through horrendous oppression that is so far outside my realm of experience. There is something in the way the work presents these stories that really lasts; the synthetic, monotone voice devoid of emotion is matter-of-fact instructing us that this is what happened and we need to hear it. They are individual accounts but I imagine there are too many other people who have similar truths to tell.”
Artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy share an interest in popular culture and post-colonialism. In both their collaborative and solo projects they examine communal and personal heritage by way of performance, digital imagery and video. The series FF Gaiden is part of an ongoing collaboration between the artists and wider communities examining the writings of the anti-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon (1925–61). ‘Gaiden’ is a Japanese word that means ‘side story’. In the gaming world, it refers to a spin-off or secondary version of an existing game.
During a residency in Norway at PRAKSIS Oslo, in 2016 the artists worked closely with paperless migrants in Oslo and the organisation Mennisker i Limbo (People in Limbo), to discuss issues surrounding identity, technology and contemporary culture. These discussions, and further close collaboration, resulted in a video work that makes use of the virtual space of the computer game Grand Theft Auto V to create ‘a complex tapestry of stories’ about ‘migration, cultural history and social change’. Commissioned by PRAKSIS Oslo, Norway. In collaboration with Mennisker i Limbo (People in Limbo), in partnership with PNEK, Atelier Nord, and Notam.
FF Gaiden: Delete, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, 2016