_GOD_MODE_ / Larry Achiampong & David Blandy.

"Genetic Automata is a four-part series of video installations. The fourth and final part, _GOD_MODE_, addresses eugenics and the history of anthropology, tracing the factors that catalysed eugenic policies from the right and left of politics and gave them weight in an increasingly precise scientific environment. It looks at figures such as Francis Galton (1822- 1911), the founder of the Eugenics movement who established it as an academic discipline at UCL. The work draws an explicit link between anthropological interest and the development of eugenics, and the subsequent collapse of the notion of the "objective outsider" after the crisis in the discipline. This will lead into research on new manifestations of eugenic thinking, from transhumanism to immigration rhetoric. Working with geneticists from Wellcome Connecting Science, based at the Wellcome Genome Campus, Cambridgeshire, the work will merge contemporary scientific research with virtual imagery both created and found in videogame environments, and video documentary of objects from anthropological archives and collections. It will examine the present state of understandings of race and identity, and how they are embedded in the culture we consume."-- Summarised from documentation provided by curator.

"'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

[United Kingdom] : Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, 2023.

1 online resource (1 video file (12.25 min.)) : sound, colour

"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/

00:12:25

Larry Achiampong and David Blandy. All rights reserved.

Wellcome Collection 3314515i

Directors, Larry Achiampong and David Blandy ; CGI and editors, David Blandy and Claire Barrett ; soundtrack, Larry Achiampong.

Narrators: Larry Achiampong and David Blandy.

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

Commissioned by Wellcome Collection, Black Cultural Archives and Wellcome Connecting Science.

The title has been taken from wording in the credits.