Jazmin Morris – Sandbox

Jazmin Morris re-imagines Modal gallery as a community resource, activated with talks, workshops and an interactive library.

Featuring talks, workshops, a games night and an open-access library, Morris looks to disrupt and push the boundaries of knowledge sharing and traditional archiving, situating carefully curated media as a tool for collective resistance and liberation.  A response to gaps in access to cultural and educational experiences,  Sandbox is a call and part of a long term ambition to envision more radical systems for learning, critical thinking and restorative practices and the potential of code and technologies. 

The show will launch in a celebratory style with artist Michelle Collier for an exploratory Q&A from 5:30pm. 

Both in person and digitally, the show and residency will take place at the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University and manifest via Gather, an interactive 8-bit style virtual conferencing platform. In Gather, audiences will join a virtual ‘in conversation’ with Jazmin Morris and Ama Dogbe whilst also being able to explore some elements of the physical show, online. 

As part of her residency, Jazmin partners with Rekindle, an alternative school for working class young people in Manchester encouraging fierce critical thinking and self-belief. 

Audiences are invited to explore Jazmin’s presentation of artefacts, literature, provocations, worlds and interactive games. Jazmin will lead workshops to explore themes of worldbuilding, science fiction and creative technology skill sharing. To be present, play, connect and recharge with opportunities to explore digital works from Jazmin’s cannon that interrogate extractive economies of digital industries and the exclusion of those with limited access to resources, infrastructure or representation.

This event is part of Commons, a unique programme fostering innovative approaches to digital practice, inviting digital practitioners to draw upon new opportunities for collaborating, making and resourcing. Selected artists have been invited to showcase recent works whilst developing new and ambitious projects within a community of artists, researchers and technologists.

Commons is a joint commitment by Abandon Normal Devices and the School of Digital Arts to platform emerging art forms and push the boundaries of digital practice, devised as a prompt to rethink our approaches to digital practices and ask if we can develop new models for commissioning, experiencing, interpreting and preserving digital art that reflect the inherent values of digital culture.