Image Copyright Danielle Brathwaite Shirley 2020
TheGallery.dmu.ac.uk
17 July to 25 August 2020, online
Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCoKLbp6YkyaATaJ8cw3jiw
Speakers include: Ben Judd, Angela Washko, Sarah Jury, Ayesha Hameed, Kate Pickering, Lucy A. Sames and Bridget Crone, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, GodXXX Noirphiles and Tom K Kemp
Curated by Daniel Sean Kelly
A series of online talks and films from artists and writers exploring ideas of universe creation as a mode of contemporary arts practice. The works will be shared through different platforms, some live and some pre-recorded.
From the mid-twentieth century works of popular culture co-opted religious and mythical modes of storytelling, relying on interconnected narratives, reiterated across different media but sharing laws and histories to create coherent universes. Storytelling across comics, television, films and games began to prioritise the creation of fictional worlds, allowing multiple works to be produced across time and in different media. This form of production has had immense popular reach in the first two decades of this century. Mirroring this, artists have increasingly deployed this expanded mode of production, raising questions about authorship, participation and the political potentials of fiction and imagination, challenging the way art and culture has been conceived throughout modernity.
These six talks will be presented by contemporary artists and theorists working in this field and as a series seeks to map different applications of universe creation in current practice. The series will be available to view subsequently online.
Friday 17th July, 4pm GMT, Live
Ben Judd and Hugo Worthy
As a part of Leicester Gallery’s Universes programme the artist Ben Judd will discuss his work for Leicester Gallery in 2021. He is expanding a project begun as part of Fig Futures in 2018 that developed a fictional community from the history of the gallery site and Leicester’s industrial heritage. The process that he follows involves multi-disciplinary collaborations with writers, costume designers, artists, choreographers and musicians. He will present an overview of his practice and the project followed by a conversation with the curator Hugo Worthy.
Speaker’s biography and further information can be found here.
Please email LeicesterGallery@DMU.ac.uk to confirm attendance and a Zoom invitation will be sent to you on the day of the talk.
Tuesday 28th July, 5pm, Recorded
Angela Washko and Sarah Jury
A conversation between Angela Washko and Sarah Jury, who discuss their application and experience of speculative fiction and role play within video game and live action role play (LARP) environments. Sarah and Angela draw on existing examples to reflect on how these mechanisms might create space for reconsidering ideologies.
Speakers’ biography and further information can be found here.
The conversation will be available to view online from 5pm, please RSVP to LeicesterGallery@dmu.ac.uk for a link to be emailed to you on the day or it will be accessible through Leicester Gallery’s website: thegallery.dmu.ac.uk
5pm, Tuesday 4 August, Live
Ayesha Hameed, Kate Pickering, Lucy A. Sames and Bridget Crone
LIQUID WORLDS
In this session, a group of artists, writers and curators will read from their work building and exploring speculative, liquid worlds.
The series of readings will be followed by a short conversation addressing different approaches to the notion of liquidity as a methodology or process of sensory and the extra-sensory, and as a speculative space of world-building and undoing.
Speakers biography and further information can be found here.
Please email LeicesterGallery@DMU.ac.uk to confirm attendance and a Zoom invitation will be sent to you on the day of the talk.
Tuesday 11 August, 5pm, Recorded
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley and GodXXX Noirphiles
Becoming a trans mum is something the world does not prepare you for. There is no guide book, no help to understand how to bring up a child while you lived as trans. Join Danielle and GodXXX Noirphiles as they talk about becoming mothers together, what that means, and how they are imagining new futures for their child.
Some people like to role play to imagine themselves in an experience that’s not theirs, we have to roleplay to invent a way of living that we have been told don’t exist.
Speakers’ biography and further information can be found here.
The conversation will be available to view online from 5pm, please RSVP to LeicesterGallery@dmu.ac.uk for a link to be emailed to you on the day or it will be accessible through Leicester Gallery’s website: thegallery.dmu.ac.uk
Tuesday 18 August, 5pm, Recorded
Tom K Kemp
‘After the Maestro’ is a tabletop roleplaying game by Tom K Kemp set within an anthropomorphised anatomical city. Players take on the role of cellular and microbial workers during the aftermath of a successful labour emancipation within the inner body. Through ludic storytelling and speculative worldbuilding, each iteration of the game generates a narrative with its own ‘body-politic’ metaphors, describing and anthropomorphising different body systems and devising new structures of organisation and interdependence in the sudden absence of established anatomical hierarchies.
This play report brings together a playthrough of the game with Anna Mcfarlane, whose research interests draw upon the medical humanities, science fiction and cyberpunk, broadcaster and architect Andrea González and artist and writer Daniel Sean Kelly.
Speakers’ biography and further information can be found here.
The film will be available to view online from 5pm, please RSVP to LeicesterGallery@dmu.ac.uk for a link to be emailed to you on the day or it will be accessible through Leicester Gallery’s website: thegallery.dmu.ac.uk
Tuesday 25 August, 5pm, Live
Daniel Sean Kelly, Hugo Worthy
Daniel Sean Kelly, the curator of this programme will talk through his research around the role of universe creation and the fan and the significance of this work in our immediate context of widespread instability and a need for radical social change. This will be a live conversation streamed from Leicester Gallery.
Speakers’ biography and further information can be found here.
The conversation will stream live online from 5pm, please RSVP to LeicesterGallery@dmu.ac.uk for a link to be emailed to you on the day or it will be accessible through this website.