The Expulsion

‘Finding Fanon’ is the first part in a series of works by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy; inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon, (1925-1961) a politically radical humanist whose practice dealt with the psychopathology of colonisation and the social and cultural consequences of decolonisation. In the film, the two artists negotiate Fanon’s ideas, examining the politics of race, racism and the post-colonial, and how these societal issues affect their relationship. Their conflict is played out through a script that melds found texts and personal testimony, transposing their drama to a junkyard houseboat at an unspecified time in the future. Navigating the past, present and future, Achiampong and Blandy question the promise of globalisation, recognising its impact on their own heritage.

'Finding Fanon 2' collides art-house cinema with digital culture’s Machinima, resulting in a work that explores the post-colonial condition from inside a simulated environment – the Grand Theft Auto 5 in-game video editor. This video work combines several stories, including how the artists’ familial histories relate to colonial history, an examination of how their relationship is formed through the virtual space, and thoughts on the implications of the post-human condition. The Finding Fanon series is inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon, (1925-1961) a politically radical humanist whose practice dealt with the psychopathology of colonisation and the social and cultural consequences of decolonisation. Throughout the series, Achiampong and Blandy negotiate Fanon’s ideas, examining the politics of race, racism and decolonisation, and how these societal issues affect our relationship amidst an age of new technology, popular culture and globalisation.

The second film in the series, 'Relic 1' forms part of Larry Achiampong's Relic Traveller: Phase 1, a multi-disciplinary project manifesting in performance, audio, moving image and prose. Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration. In the short film, a Relic Traveller is featured apparating sites across a seemingly desolate United Kingdom. Uncovering fragments of audible data presenting clue-like testimonies to a forgotten Empire, the Relic Traveller soon finds themselves in an atmosphere that simultaneously delivers poetic moments of the sublime met with increasingly harrowing claustrophobia and tales of trauma. Thus resulting in a familiar feeling of otherness, we are invited on a journey that embodies hysteria.

Video by Larry Achiampong.

"Finding Fanon Part Three" is inspired by the lost plays of Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), a radical humanist, psychiatrist and writer whose work explored the mental distress caused by colonisation and the consequences of decolonisation. Achiampong and Blandy re-interpret Fanon’s ideas, and how the politics of race affect relationships in an age of digital technology and globalisation.

The fourth film in the series, ‘Relic 3’ forms part of Relic Traveller: Phase 2, a multi-disciplinary project by Larry Achiampong, which manifests in performance, audio, moving image and prose. Centred within themes related to Sanko-time, Relic Traveller takes place across various landscapes and locations; the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.

The first film in the series, 'Relic 0' forms part of Larry Achiampong's Relic Traveller: Phase 1, a multi-disciplinary project manifesting in performance, audio, moving image and prose. Taking place across various landscapes and locations, the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration. Relic 0, which is the prelude to the series, is a short film that moves between African and Western based vistas and focuses on specific architectures of colonialism as delivered by an anonymous narrator. These discoveries deliver poetic moments of the sublime met with increasingly harrowing tales of trauma - speaking to the sinister way that states of anxiety, fear and displacement are both generated and policed in postcolonial society. The throb of the electronic score and ringing clarity of the narrator's testimony usher in a new landscape and temporality, born from cracks in a traumatised, apocalyptic present.

The third film in the series, ‘Relic 2’ forms part of Relic Traveller: Phase 2, a multi-disciplinary project by Larry Achiampong, which manifests in performance, audio, moving image and prose. Centred within themes related to Sanko-time, Relic Traveller takes place across various landscapes and locations; the project builds upon a postcolonial perspective informed by technology, agency and the body, and narratives of migration.

As part of his current research Larry Achiampong is interested in the mutations of traditions and language that are birthed as a result of colonisation, and how they affect people today. In particular, the relationship with Christian imperialism and its impact on his tribe: the Ashanti. Sunday’s Best considers how belief systems within the diaspora are inflected by these colonial histories in the present day. The work is a confluence of the vivid sounds and images of praise and worship sessions in a Ghanaian community church married with the stark interiors of a Roman Catholic Church. Documented across a number of sites in London, Sunday’s Best maps out a narrative of coming to terms with the incongruence of faith practices that straddle western and non-western influences.

Set during a pandemic, the film tracks the movements of its central protagonist – The Wanderer, a young girl, on an intrepid journey across England. Presented across six chapters, including ‘The North’, ‘The Land of Smoke’ and ‘The Kingdom of the East’, this epic film builds a dialogue around the themes of class and economic exclusion, belonging and displacement, cultural heritage and the meaning of home.