Artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy are joined by film critic Ashley Clark to discuss their latest film, A Lament for Power. Alongside Emma MacNicol, our moderator for this evening’s event, they will expand on the ideas and inspiration behind this extraordinarily insightful film.
A Lament for Power explores the ethics of scientific discovery and the complex relationship between science, politics and race in our everyday lives. Weaving together images from sources that include the gaming world’s ‘Resident Evil 5’, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy create a space to make visible the sometimes murky world of scientific research as they probe at the economic and racial divides that underpin our social structures.
Join us online for a fascinating evening of debate and conversation, including a viewing of A Lament for Power.
Register here on: Zoom to book your place.
Larry Achiampong
Larry Achiampong’s solo and collaborative projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity.
With works that examine his communal and personal heritage – in particular, the intersection between pop culture and the postcolonial position, Achiampong crate-digs the vaults of history. These investigations examine constructions of ‘the self’, offering multiple perspectives that reveal entrenched socio-political contradictions in contemporary society.
Larry has exhibited nationally and internationally including Frieze, London (2020), ‘Get Up Stand Up Now’, Somerset House, London (2019), ‘The Grid’, Seventeen and Copperfield, London (2019), Genetic Automita, Art Catalyst, London (2019), the ‘Diaspora Pavilion’, Venice Biennale (2017), ‘Finding Fanon’, Tate Modern (2016), a Sound Archive residency at the British Library (2016) and at the Institute for Creative Arts, Capetown South Africa (2015). He is represented by Copperfield Gallery, London.
David Blandy
David Blandy has established his terrain through a series of investigations into the cultural forces that inform and influence him, ranging from his love of 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 provide his (and our own) individualist sense of self.
David works as a solo artist and through a long-term collaboration with Larry Achiampong. He exhibits internationally, including Frieze, London (2020), ‘How to Fly/How to Live’ John Hansard Gallery, Southampton (2020), ‘The World After’ at Focal Point Gallery, Southend (2019), The Grid at Copperfield and Seventeen, London (2019), Genetic Automita, Art Catalyst, London (2019), ‘Hello World’ at the Art Tower Mito, Tokyo, Japan and Kiasma Contemporary Art Musuem, Helsinki, Finland (2017) and ‘Finding Fanon’ at Tate Modern (2016). He is represented by Seventeen.
Along with collaborative artist Larry Achiampong, Blandy was shortlisted for the Film London Jerwood Award (2018).
Ashley Clark
Ashley Clark is a film critic, broadcast journalist and director of Film Programming at Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in New York. In 2019 he was named in Screen International’s Future Leaders list of programmers as one to watch.
His programming includes ‘Black Star’ at the British Film Institute 2016-17, a major film season dedicated to exploring the range, versatility and power of black actors; co-programmer of ‘Marking Faces on Film’ (MOMA, New York 2017); ‘Neither/Nor: Black Audio Film Collective, 1980s – 1990s’ (True/False 2018), ‘And Still I Rise: The Short Films of Ngozi Onwurah’ (Spectacle Theater 2015), and ‘Space is the Place: Afrofuturism on Film’ (BAM cinematek 2015) and ‘Inside Afrofuturism’ (BFI Southbank 2014).
Ashley Clark has written extensively, including his book ‘Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled’ (2015) and contributes to publications including The Guardian, Sight & Sound and Village Voice, alongside being a regular contributor to the BBC Film Show and BBC Radio 4 Front Row.
Emma MacNicol
Emma MacNicol is a freelance curator and post-graduate of SOAS University of London, who specialises in studies of modern and contemporary African art, decolonial theory and inquiring practices within the cultural sector.
Since graduating from Culture&’s heritage training programme, ‘Strengthening Our Common Lives,’ in 2017 she has worked as a curator at the Science Museum, London in addition to co-founding the ‘Museum of Dissent’, a collective formed to explore the possibility of dissent as a reformative practice within the heritage sector.
Emma also develops interrogative conferences and workshops such as, ‘Decolonising Science Narratives’ (Science Museum, 2019) and ‘Art and Protest – A Thread’ (John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, 2020) and is now looking to publish her dissertation on using historiography to decolonise the study of modern Nigerian art.