video
Androids Dream
David Blandy
David Blandy (1976, Lives & works in Brighton, UK) makes work that slips between performance and video, digital and analogue, investigating the stories and cultural forces that inform and influence our lives. Collaboration is central to his practice, examining communal and personal heritage and interdependence. With research spanning multiple forms of archive, from historic texts to academic archives, archaeology and ecological theory, twitch streams and film archives, Blandy weaves poetic works that explore the complexities of the contemporary subject. His projects involve complex installations, performance, writing, gaming and sound.
Nominated for the Film London Jarman award with Larry Achiampong in 2018. He has exhibited & performed at venues nationally and worldwide such as Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Tate Modern, London; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany & MoMA PS1, New York.
He is represented by Seventeen Gallery, London. Films are distributed by LUX.
David Blandy is the guest on the fourth episode of our collaboration with Future Artefacts FM, hosted by Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidtke. You can listen to the episode here
In Androids Dream (2022), 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.
Commissioned by Petra Szemán for On Animatics for Saturday Morning Animation Club
Saturday Morning Animation Club was produced in collaboration with isthisit? and Off Site Project
Also shown as part of Alternate Prescence - Petra Szemán & David Blandy, Seventeen, London
The Video was 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 has been published by Banner Repeater, edited by Petra Szemán and Jamie Sutcliffe.
Contributors include: David Blandy, Dawn Chan, Ian Condry, Patrick W. Galbraith, Cole J. Graham, Catherine Harrington, Thomas Lamarre, Deborah Levitt, Sahej Rahal, Jamie Sutcliffe, Petra Szemán
