Episode 19/4 The End of the World; FA X The Couch

What would you do at the end of the world? For the third part of our collaboration with The Couch, we are thrilled to share David Blandy’s work, The End of the World. Revisiting this work, we explore the ends of multiple worlds; family illness, the foundations of a political system shattering and the end of a 17 year old magical gaming world, Asheron’s Call. When reflected in the present moment, we hear from Blandy about collective grief, and where places of solidarity, like that in Asheron’s call, can help us come to terms with the endings of multiple worlds. From online MMORPG’s to table-top role-play, together we discuss the rules that allow these games to exist by defining a space for worldbuilding or escape, parameters to enter and leave worlds, and to destroy them. The similarities of this logic to embodied magical practices further connects the community of spell making in Asheron’s Call, to the broader realities witchcraft or ritual suggest. These rules could also be a set of fictions, enabling us to review which worlds around us are ending, and what the end of one world might impose on another. 

We are also very pleased to be able to screen David Blandy's video work Androids Dream on The Couch. Catch it until May 15, 2024.

About Future Artefacts FM

Future Artefacts FM is an artist-run programme by Nina Davies and Niamh Schmidt that supports artists working with both sound and fiction, culminating in a programme of radio shows, workshops and live events. The Couch will play host to Future Artefacts FM for four special episodes. We feel that the topics Nina and Niamh and their guests deal with – fiction, sound as a vehicle for worldbuilding, and alternative technological futures – fit intimately with the questions we at The Couch are asking ourselves.

Read more about Future Artefacts here, or listen to Episodes 1, 2 and 3

Presenters

Nina Davies is a Canadian/British artist who considers the present moment through observing dance in popular culture; how it's disseminated, circulated, made, and consumed. She recently graduated from Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art where she was awarded the Almacantar Studio Award and the Goldsmiths Junior Fellowship position. Her work has recently been exhibited and shown at Transmediale, AdK, Berlin; Seventeen, London; Matt’s Gallery, Mattflix program; Circa x Dazed Class of 2022, Piccadilly Lights in London, Limes in Berlin, K-Pop Square in Seoul, Fed Square, Melbourne; Overmorrow House, Battle; and Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Hawick. https://www.ninadavies.net/info

Niamh Schmidtke (she/they b.1997, Dublin) explores the political complications of ‘being green’ by cultivating conversations with the environment, through speculation, audio, ceramics and installations. They examine the relationship between listening and speaking, to consider the kinds of voices that deep time, the sea, or humans could have with one another. These relations critique the utopia of renewable energies, drawing attention to the financial origins of climate crises and examine intimacy as a form of decolonial praxis for the future. They are currently working on commissions for Science Gallery International in Berlin, and the Hunt Museum in Ireland. They completed their MFA at Goldsmiths, London with a First Class Honours in 2021 and hold a Fine Art Honours BA from Limerick School of Art and Design (2019). https://www.niamhschmidtke.com/

Participant

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.