DAVID BLANDY &
PETRA SZEMÀN
WELCOME TO THE UPDATES PAGE FOR THE NMN 2025 DIGITAL RESIDENCIES
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WELCOME TO THE UPDATES PAGE FOR THE NMN 2025 DIGITAL RESIDENCIES —
DAVID BLANDY & PETRA SZEMÁN BEGIN WORK ON THEIR 2025-2026 NMN DIGITAL RESIDENCY
Artists David Blandy (left) and Petra Szemán (right).
The residency is about to begin. Plans have been made. And the path ahead is unknown, with a map of our County, still undrawn…
David Blandy & Petra Szemàn who have exhibited and produced work internationally are now joining forces to work collaboratively on a symbiotic programme across County Durham.
We’ll be sharing updates as their work progresses, but for now here’s an introduction to where the compass is pointing.
Q: “What defines “digital” as a place and how does that relate to our physical place of County Durham, in the wider context of the world?”
► David Blandy (he/him)
“Working in collaboration with Petra, I want to bring together a digital community around a shared quest, to create an online encyclopedic map of an alternative future County Durham. I want to encourage disparate and often left behind communities to think about the places around them, to question the normal and to listen to diverse stories - to highlight the fact that we all inhabit different internal worlds even though we might live in the same physical space.”
► Petra Szemàn (they/them)
“A real-life place can take on a virtual quality in multiple ways. One may see the place in a film, or know of local legends and mythologies tied to it, or a place may simply evoke a dream, or a memory of a different time. I envision these versions of “place”, different layers of multiple parallel realities, twisting and merging together, becoming a sprawling archival output. This shared quest aims for establishing an alternative future County Durham.”
ARTISTS APPROACH TO THEIR RESIDENCY:
JOIN IN WITH PUBLIC WORKSHOPS — WEDS 27 AUG - FRI 29 AUG
Join drop-in sessions with the artists, held over 3 days from Weds 27 Aug to Fri 29 Aug (RSVP below)
Artists David and Petra are taking up temporary residence in a pop-up shop space in Castle Dene Shopping Centre in Peterlee, Co. Durham… and they need your help 🫵
What to expect:
Informal drop-in workshops covering creative activities around defining the strange creatures of our county; map-making for an alternative future for our places, questioning the normal and listening to unheard stories though playing creative games, writing, drawing and chatting in a friendly atmosphere.
± Mapmaking Through Play: Get playful and draw your own unique vision of a 'weirded' County Durham in a collaborative map-making game designed by the artists.
± Odd Ecology: Get creative! Draw and write about bizarre creatures inspired by randomised descriptions and your local knowledge and old folklore tales from your place.
🕰️ When: Weds 27 - Friday 29 Aug, 10am - 3pm (10am - 2pm on Friday 29th)
📍 Where: Castle Dene Shopping Centre, Peterlee (Next door to Halifax) 👀
🫖 Drop-in Workshop booking: These sessions are informal drop-ins, but please RSVP, it helps our planning. *If you’re bringing young children, you must stay here with them at all times.
🐲 What can I do now?
RSVP now — See below.
Callout for creatures: share your local creatures, myths, cryptids (think The Lambton Worm, shape-shifting creatures/animals, the Grey Lady, ghosts and other unexplained sightings and experiences!).
This online collection of stories will directly inform the artist’s work — Share your tales below!
RSVP NOW — LET US KNOW WHAT DAY YOU’D LIKE TO COME:
🧌 CALL OUT FOR CREATURES!
Tell us about the creatures, folklore, myths, legends and unexplained phenomena from where you live.
From the Lambton Worm, to giant boars, shape-shifting hares, ghosts, witches and monsters, County Durham has a history of weird and wonderful folklore - but have you experienced anything first-hand that is hard to explain - or had local stories passed down from generation to generation?
Then we want to hear about it! Tell us about it below!
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
David Blandy is an artist examining global structures of control and networks of resistance, in areas as diverse as ecology, history, science and arenas of play. He makes videos, games, sound and ephemera, deconstructing forms to put them back together again.
Blandy searches for meaning in cultural life, sifting through multiple forms of archive, from historic texts to academic archives, archaeology and ecological theory, twitch streams and film archives, weaving poetic works that explore the complexities of the contemporary life.
Perhaps it’s hubris, but he wants to build complex stories that sketch out a future of interdependence, through visual poetry and immersive play.
He has exhibited & performed at venues nationally and worldwide, with solo shows at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton; Towner Gallery, Eastbourne; Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; The Baltic, Gateshead; Turner Contemporary, Margate; Spike Island, Bristol; The Exchange, Newlyn; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany. Blandy has also exhibited in museums internationally including at 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa; Art Tower Mito, Tokyo; Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum, Helsinki; Tate Modern, London; & MoMA PS1, New York. Alongside Jamie Sutcliffe & Rebecca Edwards, Blandy curated "Areas Of Effect”, a symposium at Arebyte London. He often works collaboratively, and shares one joint practice with artist Larry Achiampong and another with Petra Szemán.
Artists website: https://davidblandy.co.uk/
Hear about David’s practice:
Petra Szemán is a moving image artist working with animation and game-like landscapes. Their practice focuses on the murky borderlands along the arbitrary line separating real and fictional, and the kind of lives and experiences that are possible there.
Using a virtual version of themself as a protagonist journeying through animatic realms, they explore liminal spaces and threshold situations, looking to dissect the ways our memories and selves are constructed within a landscape oversaturated with fiction (both on- and off-screen).
Turning away from thinking of cyberspace as a radically ‘other’ realm, Petra hopes to walk the line situated between dystopian and utopian frameworks, eyes set on new queer horizons. Petra is a BA Fine Art graduate from Newcastle University (2013-2017), and has exhibited since at BALTIC (Gateshead), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), NTT InterCommunicationCentre (Tokyo), & various galleries across Europe and East-Asia.
After spending two years in Japan, developing a body of work as a recipient of a research scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education and Culture (2018-2020).
They’re the co-author/editor of WEEB THEORY, a book about the overlapping area between artists’ moving image, games and anime (2023). Petra is a lecturer in the Fine Art department at Newcastle University.
Artist website: https://www.petraszeman.com/
Watch a recent project of Petra’s:
Project partners:
— Commissioned by No More Nowt and funded by Arts Council England.
— Part funded in partnership with Into the Light
— [Digital] Place Lab
— OGRE Studio
— David Blandy
— Petra Szamán
— Thanks to Castle Dene Shopping Centre, Peterlee