Announcing a new partnership between AND and the School of Digital Arts

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Metropolitan University are embarking on a two year curatorial partnership of the school’s art gallery, Modal. As the first of its kind at the University, the creative partnership will produce a programme of public facing events and exhibitions that reflect AND’s unexpected and radically disruptive curatorial style. 

Over the next two years, you can expect a series of experimental performance lectures, investigative film labs, and immersive gatherings that highlight our shared interests for emerging technologies and digital futures. 

After a successful collaboration with New Cinema Days in 2023, this curatorial partnership gives AND a playground of opportunity to showcase an experimental annual programme outside of the nomadic festival structure that shifts geographically and thematically every iteration. 

We are excited to continue creating innovative experiences that enable audiences to develop skills, share knowledge, and adventure outside disciplines. This partnership with SODA and Modal Gallery marks a new chapter for AND, helping us develop new cross-disciplinary practices in Manchester, create a space for artistic conversation at the intersection of academia and the arts, and support our role as a catalyst for new ideas and artforms as we work towards AND’s next festival edition.
Tadeo Lopez-Sendon, AND’s Director

Developing new, creative pathways is integral to AND’s approach to making work. During the first 12 months of the new executive team together, AND have been carefully constructing new ways to engage with the city that stays true to its nomadic beginnings. So, complimentary to the foundations of the festival, the partnership offers a place for AND to nurture critical dialogue around contemporary digital creation in the heart of Manchester. 

Launching the partnership is an evening of Performance Lectures at Critical Acts, and an immersive film lab, Deep Focus, for emerging journalists, artists and filmmakers taking place in Autumn 2024.

Critical Acts: Performance Lectures exploring how power operates in the digital age // 9 Oct 2024 – a platform for surveying emerging net and digital cultures. Critical Acts, hosted at SODA, seeks to unravel the intricate ways in which power operates within our interconnected lives and emerging models for existing and engaging with an online world. Find out more and reserve your place.

Deep Focus // 6 – 7 Dec 2024 – an experimental lab for the possibilities of non-fiction narrative, in collaboration between AND, the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) and the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting (CAIR). For emerging journalists, artists and filmmakers based in the UK to uncover new and diverse ways to shape compelling non-fiction documentaries. Find out more.

A Deep Focus screening: Don’t Believe the Hyperlink // 6 Dec 2024 –  an evening of short film screenings which explore the deceptively seductive nature of algorithmic recommendations and the online aesthetic methods employed to allure and manipulate our desires or fantasies. Get your tickets.

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This programme is a collaboration between Abandon Normal Devices (AND) and Modal gallery at Manchester Metropolitan University’s School of Digital Arts (SODA). AND is supported with public funding from Arts Council England.

Image Credit: Extensionless Thought Points, Mark Fell at AND Festival 2017. Photo taken by Chris Foster