EVENT: SATURDAY MORNING ANIMATION CLUB (JUNE 11, 18, 25 - JULY 2, 9 2022, ONLINE)

SATURDAY MORNING ANIMATION CLUB

Curated by Petra Széman in partnership with isthisit? and Off Site Project

Supported by Arts Council England

Saturday June 11, 18, 25 2022

Saturday July 2, 9 2022

online (registration required, see below for details and links)

Saturday Morning Animation Club is a terrific screening/talk series taking place over five consecutive Saturday mornings, featuring new works by Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Christian Wright, and Bob Bicknell-Knight. Each screening will be followed by a second presentation featuring a commentary by the artist, and will conclude with a Q&A session. The curators’ goal is “to re-capture the excitement of watching cartoons over the weekend and celebrate all forms of fandom”.

Full details

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.

Join us on Saturday mornings for a screening of new video commissions by Emily Mulenga, Petra Szemán, David Blandy, Christian Wright and Bob Bicknell-Knight respectively, followed by a little insider walkthrough and a Q&A (via Zoom).

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. The screening series has been produced in collaboration with web projects isthisit? and Off Site Project. Attendance of all five screenings will be rewarded with a special prize.

The videos were commissioned using funding from Arts Council England as part of On Animatics, a cross-disciplinary project exploring the murky overlapping areas of contemporary art, animation, fandom, avatars and virtual worlds.To conclude the project, the book WEEB THEORY will be released later this year with Banner Repeater, edited by Petra Szemán and Jamie Sutcliffe.

Featured artwoks

June 11 2022, Emily Mulenga, Main Character (2022)

Main Character centres around the Bunny as she experiences the abrupt end of her relationship, set against the backdrop of her life in a cyberpunk city and her evening gig as a singer. Whilst the event tears a hole in the fabric of her reality, it leads to reflections on the nature of being and what can be discovered underneath surface appearances. Flipping between 3D visuals, 2D animation and live action footage, Emily’s film takes inspiration from cartoons, video games and music videos as means to navigate the character’s relationship to life.

Register here

June 18 2022, Petra Szemán, Openings !!! (2022)

Inhabiting the interstitial zones of anime credit sequences, video game loading screens and regional train journeys, Petra Szemán’s Openings !!! intensifies the gaps between the layers of animated imagery in an attempt to grasp the kinds of experience that may lie beyond human perceptual boundaries. The video follows the protagonist ‘Yourself’ as they ride local trains through intermedial landscapes. From this uniquely conceived and drafted kinetic viewpoint, fragments of different worlds segue into view, signalling perceptual ruptures that seemingly force subjectivity outside of itself, into strange new relationships of interdependency and intoxication with the moving image.

Register here

June 25 2022, David Blandy, Androids Dream (2022)

In Androids Dream, 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. 

Register here

July 02 2022, Christian Wright, Body Language (2022)

Primarily shot within the video game Dark Souls III (2016), Body Language tells the story of an epic encounter between two online players. Focusing on how the combatants communicate via the limited body language afforded to them by the game design and the performative traditions of gaming communities, Christian’s film combines the grandiosity of cinema with the janky awkwardness of gameplay. The result is both reminiscent of videos produced and shared in insular fan communities, while also relating to a burgeoning contemporary art and academic context. 

Register here

July 09 2022, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Non-Player Character (2022)

A looping CGI video, Bob’s Non-Player Character explores the NPC as a vehicle by which we can understand human navigation of an increasingly codified and controlled existence. Controlled by the AI software, NPCs have predetermined sets of behaviours. Doomed to repeat the same day their lives revolve around the player, waiting for interaction. Bob’s film imagines what enemy NPCs are thinking and feeling, forced to be defeated over and over, until their data becomes unreadable.

Register here

Featured artists

Emily Mulenga

Emily Mulenga (b. 1991, England) is a multimedia artist who imagines what a digital utopia might look like from a feminist and milennial perspective. Her output is the result of a ravenous media diet, blending the high polish aesthetics of MTV with the jagged polygons of early PlayStation games; mixing YouTube video conventions with lo-fi social media posts of her online contacts. Contributing to the excessive circulation of digital matter, she considers how the blurring between human and machine changes experiences of womanhood, and how becoming cyborg is both a fantasy and reality, the future and the present. (instagram)

Petra Szemán

Petra Szemán (b. 1994, Gateshead) is a moving image artist whose practice focuses on the murky borderlands along the arbitrary separation of the real and the fictional. Using a virtual version of themself as a protagonist journeying through animatic realms, they explore liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a fictionally oversaturated landscape (both on- and off-screen). Turning away from considering cyberspace as a radically ‘other’ realm, Petra walks the line between dystopian and utopian frameworks, eyes set on new queer horizons. (instagram)

David Blandy

David Blandy (b. 1976, Brighton) investigates the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our behaviour. Through a gaming art practice he has written original RPGs that address issues of social justice, climate change and our potential posthuman futures. Collaboration is central to his practice, used as a means to examine communal and personal heritage, as well as forms of interdependence. His practice ranges from installation, performance, writing, gaming and sound. He has had national and international solo exhibitions, and is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. (instagram)

Christian Wright

Christian Wright (b. 1993, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a digital media artist working with video games and animated assets to blend cinematic and machinima visual languages. Through this frame, he looks at how the boundaries of normal play are stretched by the performative actions of players themselves. Whether it be the intimate physical interactions of online multiplayer, the choreographed quest for perfection of speedrunning, or the mimetic act of digital cosplay within character creators, Christian places community driven gestures at the forefront. (instagram)

Bob Bicknell-Knight

Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. 1996, Suffolk) is a multidisciplinary artist, curator and writer influenced by surveillance capitalism and responding to internet hyper consumerism, automation and technocratic authoritarianism. Within his practice he harnesses different processes and materials to create both physical and digital artworks, including fabric printing, painting, ceramics, bookmaking, 3D printing technologies and game development software. Key subjects of investigation include our complicity with corporate giants, the sculpting of online identities and the prescient qualities of dystopian science fiction. (instagram)

Read more: Petra Széman, isthisit?: Off Site Project (Instagram accounts)

NEWS: SPECIAL PROGRAM_MACHINEMA

MMF MMXXII is proud to present a special program titled MACHINEMA at the Museum of Interactive Cinema in Milan on March 26 2022, showcasing the most innovative and groundbreaking examples of this fascinating artform

Machinima is, first and foremost, the result of a mistake, much like “massage” (in Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium and the Massage) and “donkey” (instead on monkey, in Shigeru Miyamoto’s Donkey Kong). Specifically, it is the misspelled contraction of machine cinema (machinema), as Paul Marino wrote in one of the earliest books on the topic. The misspelling stuck because in addition to the reference to the machine, i.e., the computer, and cinema, it also alluded to anime, itself referencing animation. Far from being problematic, this confusion in terminology, is speaks volumes about the medium’s incredible versatility. In many ways, machinima has been able to repurpose previous audiovisual forms of expression and to introduce something original. This is certainly true for the works featured in this special program — David Blandy’s Androids Dream, Nicolas Bailleul’s Les Survivants, Marie Foulston’s The Grannies, and Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone — four superb machinema.

The program will be exclusively presented exclusively on the silver screen of the MIC, Museum of Interactive Cinema in Milan, Italy on March 26 2022.

Read more

Buy your ticket

NEWS: ANDROIDS DREAM AT MMF MMXXII

We are excited to announce that Androids Dream will be screened on March 26 2022 at the Interactive Museum of Cinema in Milan as part of MMF MMXXII.

The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to present the world premiere of David Blandy’s latest video work.

In Androids Dream, the artist deconstructs the cyberpunk aesthetic, an aesthetic defined by such now canonical works such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Riley Scott’s Blade Runner. Androids Dream is made of layers of multiple simulacra, from the Unreal Engine assets that look like a cyberpunk video game, to the appropriation of Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher, itself a replay of Blade Runner in videogame form, through to the voiceover spoken by an algorithmic mimesis of Blandy’s own voice, a deepfake. The film breaks down the form, and in turn breaks down, repeating, refracting, and going into reverse.

David Blandy’s practice consists of in-depth investigations into the pop cultural forces that he experienced throughout his life, from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video, reality and construct, using references sampled from the wide, disparate sources that construct and constantly reassemble his sense of self. David Blandy’s films are distributed through LUX. The artist is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London. Blandy’s work has been shown at numerous public institutions including Tate, London, UK; FACT, Liverpool, UK; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; INIVA, London, UK; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK. Blandy lives and works in London.

Get your ticket here while they last → http://bitly.com/MMFMMXXII

Watch an excerpt below

EVENT: VRAL #8_DAVID BLANDY (SEPTEMBER 3 - SEPTEMBER 17 2020)

HOW TO FLY

digital video, color, sound, 6’ 23”, 2020 (United Kingdom)

Created by David Blandy

How to Fly was originally presented by John Hansard Gallery in Southampton as part of the Digital Array programme supported by the Barker-Mill Foundation.

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti 

Originally commissioned by John Hansard Gallery in the United Kingdom and exhibited in May 2020, How to Fly uses the format of online video tutorials to explore ideas about life, nature, and technology. Created during the most intense months of the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe, How to Fly begins with the artist providing detailed information on how to make a short video about flying using the tools available on a computer, such as the Rockstar Editor, a popular video editor embedded in Grand Theft Auto V. “Hi guys. I’ve been thinking about making a film about flying,” the artist calmly tells the viewers in voiceover, before illustrating the process step by step. The entire procedure takes place on a computer screen: flying is enacted with the touch of a few strokes on the keyboard and experienced virtually. But How to Fly is not an ironic commentary on the state of the world. It is not earnest either. So, what is it? You decide.

David Blandy’s practice consists of in depth investigations into the pop cultural forces that he experienced throughout his life, from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video, reality and construct, using references sampled from the wide, disparate sources that construct and constantly reassemble his sense of self. David Blandy’s films are distributed through LUX. The artist is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London. Blandy’s work has been shown at numerous public institutions including Tate, London, UK; FACT, Liverpool, UK; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; INIVA, London, UK; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK. Blandy lives and works in London.

WATCH NOW

NEWS: IN FOCUS: LARRY ACHIAMPONG AND DAVID BLANDY (MARCH 12 2020)

We are delighted to present Finding Fanon: Gaiden, a six-episode saga created by British artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy with/in Grand Theft Auto V

After introducing Finding Fanon in 2016 - which was featured in GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY - Achiampong and Blandy return to Milan with an ambitious installation. FF: Gaiden is a series of video works created from a process of collaboration between the two artists and wider communities. Together they have used the virtual space of Grand Theft Auto V to explore ideas around the writings of Frantz Fanon, whilst also asking what it means to be human in this supposed moment of globalization. Gaiden (a term synonymous with Japanese anime and videogame culture meaning “sidestory”) expands the artist’s Finding Fanon series as they devise the tools that they used to produce Finding Fanon 2, with the public. By doing this, they give creative agency to wider communities including; working with veterans & prisoners (at FACT, Liverpool) paperless migrants (at the International Artist's Residency PRAKSIS, Oslo), a female refugee group (at New Art Exchange, Nottingham), young people (at Tyneside Gallery, Newcastle), thus allowing them to direct the way in which they share their stories. between the digital realm and IRL (‘In Real Life’). Achiampong and Blandy have worked with various communities to produce video works that combine a plethora of material; script-work based on stories and conversations from the participants concerning contemporary identity, thoughts about how their relationships and identities are formed through the virtual world, and an original, synth-driven soundtrack that contextualises the intense, high definition visuals and stories of the film.

Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, UK) completed a BA in Mixed Media Fine Art at University of Westminster (2005) and an MA in Sculpture at Slade School of Fine Art (2008). His practice uses sound, live performance, and imagery to explore representations of identity in the digital age and the dichotomies found within a world dominated by facebook/tumblr/youtube-based cultures. He crate-digs the vaults of history, splicing audible and visual qualities of the personal and interpersonal archive-as-material, offering multiple dispositions that reveal the socio-political contradictions in contemporary society. Achiampong has exhibited, performed, and presented projects within the UK and abroad including Tate Britain & Modern; London, David Roberts Art Foundation; London, Modern Art Oxford; Oxford, New Art Exchange; Nottingham, SAVVY Contemporary; Berlin, and Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation; Accra. Achiampong lives and works in London.

David Blandy (b. 1976, U.K.) is an artist based in London & Brighton, who works with digital media, including video games. He was educated at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. Blandy produces video, performances and comics that deal with his problematic relationship with popular culture, highlighting the slippage and tension between fantasy and reality in everyday life. Blandy has exhibited at venues nationally and worldwide such as Bloomberg Space, London; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; PS1, New York and Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China. Represented by Seventeen, London. His films are distributed through LUX.

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Siamo felici di presentare Finding Fanon: Gaiden, una saga di sei episodi creata dagli artisti britannici Larry Achiampong e David Blandy con/in Grand Theft Auto V

Dopo il debutto di Finding Fanon nel 2016 - incluso nella mostra GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY - Achiampong e Blandy ritornano a Milano con un’installazione ambiziosa. FF Gaiden consiste in varie opere audiovisive create attraverso un intenso processo di collaborazione tra i due artisti e comunità più ampie. Insieme, hanno utilizzato lo spazio virtuale di Grand Theft Auto V per esplorare concetti e idee formulate da Frantz Fanon, interrogandosi sul significato dell’esistenza in un’era di massima globalizzazione. Gaiden (termine giapponese che indica una storia o narrazione secondaria) è un’espansione della serie Finding Fanon, che mira a condividere con il pubblico le tecniche usate per la realizzazione di Finding Fanon 2. In questo modo, gli artisti hanno offerto un’autonomia creativa a comunità eterogenee che includono veterani e prigionieri (al FACT, Liverpool), migranti privi di documenti (all'International Artist's Residency PRAKSIS, Oslo), un gruppo di rifugiate (al New Art Exchange, Nottingham), giovani (alla Tyneside Gallery, Newcastle), consentendo loro di raccontare le proprie storie in bilico tra la sfera del virtuale e la vita reale (IRL). Achiampong e Blandy hanno lavorato con diverse comunità per realizzare lavori video che assemblano materiali eclettici; un lavoro di sceneggiatura basato su storie e conversazioni dei partecipanti riguardanti l'identità contemporanea, riflessioni su come le loro relazioni e identità si formano attraverso il mondo virtuale e una colonna sonora originale pop che contestualizza le immagini e le vicende narrate nei vari cortometraggi.

Nato nel 1984 nel Regno Unito, Larry Achiampong ha ottenuto una Laurea in Mixed Media Fine Art presso la University of Westminster (2005) e un Master of Arts in Scultura presso la Slade School of Fine Art (2008). Achiampong utilizza suoni, immagini e performance per esplorare il concetto di identità nell’era digitale. L’artista scava negli archivi della storia, appropriandosi dei materiali eterogenei in cui s’imbatte per portare in primo piano le contraddizioni socio-politiche dell’era contemporanea nonché i paradossi di un mondo dominato da Facebook, Tumblr e YouTube. Le sue opere sono state presentate nel Regno Unito e all’estero presso istituzioni come la Tate Britain & Modern di Londra, David Roberts Art Foundation a Londra, Modern Art Oxford a Oxford, New Art Exchange a Nottingham, SAVVY Contemporary a Berlino e Bokoor African Popular Music Archives Foundation ad Accra. Achiampong vive e lavora a Londra.

Nato nel 1976 nel Regno Unito, David Blandy vive e lavora tra Londra e Brighton. Nella sua pratica artistica, Blandy utilizza prevalentemente media digitali, tra cui i videogiochi. Formatosi  presso la Slade School of Fine Art e il Chelsea College of Art and Design di Londra, Blandy ha prodotto video, performance e graphic novel che tematizzano la relazione tra ideologia e popular culture. Affascinato dal corto-circuito tra fantasia e realtà nella vita quotidiana, Blandy collabora spesso con artisti internazionali. Le sue opere sono state presentate presso istituzioni internazionali tra cui Bloomberg Space di Londra, Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum di Helsinki, The Baltic a Gateshead, Turner Contemporary di Margate, Spike Island a Bristol, Künstlerhaus a Stoccarda; PS1 a New York e al Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Shanghai. Blandy è rappresentato da Seventeen, Londra. I suoi film sono distribuiti da LUX.

TRAILER

LOCATION/TIMES

Thursday March 12 2020/Giovedì 11 marzo 2020

Contemporary Exhibition Hall (IULM OPEN SPACE)

09:00 - 19:00 Free Entry

PROGRAMME/PROGRAMMA

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: DELETE

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 18’, 2016. United Kingdom.

Commissioned by Praksis Oslo, Norway. In collaboration with Mennisker i Limbo (People in Limbo), in partnership with PNEK, Atelier Nord, and Notam.

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: ALTERNATIVE

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 19’ 52”, 2016-2017. United Kingdom.

Commissioned by New Art Exchange, Nottingham for "Untitled: Art on the Conditions of our time", made with Nottingham’s Women’s Cultural Exchange.

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: CONTROL

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 21’ 54”, 2016-2017. United Kingdom.

Commissioned and produced by FACT. Supported by Paul Hamlyn Foundation. With thanks HMP Altcourse, Keith McDonnell, Tony Connolly and the HMP Altcourse gym team, HMP Liverpool and Partners of Prisoners.

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: ESCAPE

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 19’ 52”, 2016-17. United Kingdom.

Commissioned by New Art Exchange, Nottingham for "Untitled: Art on the Conditions of our time", made with Nottingham’s Women’s Cultural Exchange.

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: BLACK DEATH

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 9’, 2017. United Kingdom.

Commissioned by Two Queens, Leicester, featured as part of the exhibition Wilderness Way at MIMA. Made in collaboration with Kamile Ofoeme.

FINDING FANON GAIDEN: LEGACY

Ultra HD video, color, sound, 16:9, 15’ 2017. United Kingdom.

Commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park, supported by Arts Council England.