“It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little – have few verbal means. Eloquence – thinking in words – is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it’s more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than… Read more »
Posts By: Nick Tandavanitj
Holding audiences to account
“Questions and answers depend on a game – a game that is at once pleasant and difficult – in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of dialogue. The polemicist, on the other hand, proceeds encased in privileges that… Read more »
I could ask you anything
Ju has been at the heart of Blast Theory since the very beginning, so with Ju’s move to creating work independently, it seemed like a good time to think about how Blast Theory ticks. And from my perspective, what will be the shape of the Ju-shaped-hole that she is about to leave behind? Since I’ve… Read more »
The things that made us: Streaming
In 1998, we created our first project available online: Kidnap. We had the challenge of making an experience for audiences where only two people – the winners of the lottery who would be kidnapped – would experience the work in person. Our answer was to set up a website with a live video stream from a… Read more »
The things that made us: Front of House
Our first project using mobile devices with audiences was Uncle Roy All Around You in 2003. At the time, it was a novelty to record audio or navigate maps using a touch screen. We had to choose a word to refer to the device that we give you at Front of House (a PDA –… Read more »
The things that made us: learning to back it up
After an early incident where the first year and a half of all of Blast Theory’s files were accidentally deleted in an Amstrad floppy drive, we thought that for a long time we had our shit together with archiving and backups. From the late 1990s, neatly labelled stacks of ZIP disks and DAT tapes sat… Read more »
Blog: How we created GIFT – making noise in museums
Stepping into the main gallery at Brighton Museum is like entering an oasis of calm. Couples talk in low voices as they pull open drawers and peer into cabinets. Teenagers whisper to their classmates to ask what they’re supposed to do here. Grandparents distract children with centuries worth of artefacts from the museum’s peculiar assembly… Read more »
Everybody Is Perfect
Here’s a few images from my whirlwind introduction to Indonesia courtesy of the British Council. Alongside a group of seven from the UK, I travelled from the megacity of Jakarta to Yogyakarta to present some of Blast Theory’s projects and meet artists working with digital media, then to a short residency in the village of Jatiwangi and finally to Bandung… Read more »