Dust to data / Larry Achiampong & David Blandy.

  • Achiampong, Larry, 1984-
Date:
2021
  • Videos
  • Online

Available online

In copyright

It is possible this item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You may be able to use this digital item under a copyright exception, otherwise you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). These may be identified elsewhere in the catalogue record. Read more about copyright.

Read further guidance on copyright exceptions in the UK.

Credit

Dust to data / Larry Achiampong & David Blandy. In copyright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

About this work

Description

"Genetic Automata is a four-part series of video installations. The third, Dust to Data, examines the colonial history of archaeology and its present parallels in the data mining of DNA and social media image banks; the scraping of dirt from archaeological digs becoming the scraping of data from the virtual cloud. Both sets of discourse and activity act around the construction of a "civilisation" and the construction of "origins" stories, defining people into categories, some as human and neutral, others as non-human and/or abnormal. The script includes a fragment of a letter from William Du Bois, author of the "The Souls of Black Folk" to one of the progenitors of modern archaeology, William Petrie. Eugenics was at the heart of Egyptology, seeking scientific justification for prejudice through measurement and statistical analysis. Galton, father of Eugenics and the discipline of statistics, was a supporter of Petrie, funding several of his Egyptian expeditions. Petrie measured triangles to calculate the volume of cranial cavities of skulls, which he then used to justify assertions about white supremacy. Contemporaries of Petrie, Cicely D. Fawcett and Alice Lee, pulled apart both his thesis and the methodology. The triangle, a rotating gleaming pyramid, acts as recurring theme in Dust to Data, an image of order and hard simplicity. Eugenics was integral to the birth of archaeology, and still permeates assumptions within the field and in wider culture to today, with the Western scientific framework, based on Carl Linnaeus' classification system, where boundaries are formed, assigning labels in order to sort and define. Primary school children still learn about his research but there is no requirement for teachers to reference his racist ideology. The film features several 3D models of Australopithecine skulls, of extinct close relatives of humans who lived around two million years ago, captured using photogrammetry, including the famous "Black skull" of Paranthropus aethiopicus, discovered in 1985. Racism is a construct born of pseudo-science, and to this day racism influences social interactions and social systems, science and culture meeting through the depiction of stereotypes. History shows that whether biblical stories are presented through film, through to hero-based events illustrated in the form of videogames, the white-saviour-as-default-archetype prevails and even algorithms embedded in the very computers, apps and software we use. The artists confront the myth(s) of cultural and physical whiteness and its deeply troubling past, and how these ideas regarding origin underpin the white-supremacist foundations that are embedded throughout today's institutions, and especially through our digital lives (i.e. the relationship between social media, apps, filters and more and their connection with being weaponised by the surveillance state), revealing a complex history that confounds concepts of genetic and cultural labelling, thus creating fractious boundaries that exist in the contemporary world."-- Summarised from the artists' statement.

"'Genetic Automata' is an ongoing body of video works by artists Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, exploring race and identity in an age of avatars, videogames and DNA ancestry. The series investigates where deeply ingrained ideas about race come from and the role that science has played in shaping these perceptions."-- From website. https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/ZAW0PxQAACcG-pX8

Publication/Creation

[United Kingdom] : Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, 2021.

Physical description

1 online resource (1 video file (16.18 min.)) : sound, colour

Biographical note

"Larry Achiampong is a British-Ghanaian artist whose projects employ imagery, aural and visual archives, live performance and sound to explore ideas surrounding class, cross-cultural and post-digital identity. These investigations examine constructions of 'the self' by splicing the audible and visual materials of personal and interpersonal archives. David Blandy is a British artist who has established his working practices through a series of investigations into the cultural forces that inform and influence him, ranging from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video and explore the sources that provide his (and our own) individualist sense of self. In Larry Achiampong and David Blandy's collaborative practice, they share an interest in popular culture and the post-colonial position. They examine communal and personal heritage, using performance to investigate the self as a fiction, devising alter egos to point at their divided selves."--Summarised from documentation provided by curator, compiled using the artists' websites: https://davidblandy.co.uk/ https://www.larryachiampong.co.uk/

Duration

00:16:18

Copyright note

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. All rights reserved.

Reference

Wellcome Collection 3288171i

Creator/production credits

Directors, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy ; CGI and editor, David Blandy ; producers, Annie Jael Kwan and Charlotte Horn, Maitreyi Maheshwari and Lesley Taker ; photogrammetry, Ardern Hulme-Beaman, Hannah Crosby, JR Peterson, Christopher Scott and Charlotte Sargent: Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, University of Liverpool, Amy Scott-Murray, Imaging and Analysis Centre, Natural History Museum, London ; soundtrack, Larry Achiampong ; sound recording, Michael Bayliss, University of Liverpool.
Narrators: Larry Barnham, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy.

Exhibitions note

A subtitled version was exhibited as part of Genetic Automata held at Wellcome Collection, London, 8 June 2023 - 11 February 2024.

Notes

Commissioned by FACT, Liverpool.
The title has been taken from wording in the credits.

Type/Technique

Languages

Permanent link