WHAT WOULD YOU DO TO STOP SUPREMACY? WOULD YOU FIGHT? WOULD YOU RISK EVERYTHING? WOULD YOU KILL? YOUR ACTIONS MEAN SOMETHING. YOU CAN’T AVOID THIS. IT SOMETIMES FEELS AS THOUGH NOTHING YOU DO MATTERS BUT IT’S THE OPPOSITE. EVERYTHING YOU DO AFFECTS HISTORY…
Artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley invites you to take part in an intimate playtesting event: an interactive, improvised live play where you, the audience, become the actors. There are only participants on this set. Your presence is all that’s required to start the action and determine its path and your choice to come is only the first you’ll make on this journey. You decide where we go, who we protect, and how we protect them.
Do you think you’ll make the right decisions?
Do you think you can help us stop supremacy?
WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE is part of a six-month period of R&D supported by Arts Technologies and the Serpentine R&D platform. It furthers the artist’s ongoing quest to replace passivity, uncovering the untapped civic and activist potential of gaming to turn the world into a community of players aware of and responsible for their actions. The event will also premiere and playtest a range of prototypes developed by Braithwaite-Shirley during this time, acting as a live feedback session for the work’s continuing development and the artist’s wider practice.
Credits
Artist – Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Actors – Live Audience
Unity Producer – Rob Prouse
Vision Mixing & Post-Production – Ralph Pritchard
Gaffer – Pete Ford
Sound – Lucinda Potter
Production Assistant – Tom Oates
Videography – Ella Frost
Photography – Ivie Bartlett
Special Thanks to Ebun Sodipo, Camberwell Studios
Curated and Produced by Tamar Clarke-Brown, Eva Jäger and Arts Technologies, Serpentine
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist who works predominantly with animation, sound, performance, and video games to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Her practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to record Black Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record a “history of Trans people both living and past”, her work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans stories are stored for the future. Braithwaite-Shirley says: “throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from our archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences.” Braithwaite-Shirley’s work has been shown in Albright Knox, David Kordansky Gallery, Quad, Arebyte Gallery, Science Gallery, MU, Barbican, Tate, and Les Urbaines, and has been part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery. An online component of her work can often be found at: www.daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com
Important Information
Please note this event will be filmed and made available later in the Spring as a recorded session on YouTube and Twitch.
Please do not wear the colour green as we will be using greenscreen.
We advise that you do wear a mask for the duration of the performance.
If you have any concerns please email digital@serpentinegalleries.org.
If you have specific access needs or you require BSL interpretation to attend the event, please email digital@serpentinegalleries.org by 28 March and we will do our best to accommodate.
Venue
Studio 1 (Ground Floor)
Camberwell Studios, Block A, Chartwell Business Park, 61-65 Paulet Road, London, SE5 9HW
For directions, please refer to the map on the studios website.
