EVENT: EKIEM BARBIER, GUILHEM CAUSSE, QUENTIN L’HELGOUALC’H (JUNE 21—JULY 4 2024)

Marlowe Drive

digital video, sound, color, 34’, 2017, France

Created by Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L’helgoualc’h

In Marlowe Drive, an avatar named Adam Kesher embarks on an unconventional journey through Los Santos, a meticulously rendered virtual replica of Los Angeles in Grand Theft Auto V. Adam is crafting a pioneering game video essay, not merely documenting the game and its players, but filming entirely within the game’s landscapes. This ethnographic endeavor blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy, between players and their digital personas, while exploring the sociocultural dynamics of the simulation. Adam’s quest for a metaphorical bridge linking real-world experiences with virtual realities introduces him to characters and locations within the game that mirror broader societal themes such as ambition, identity, and self-expression. Marlowe Drive invites viewers to reassess the interconnections between gaming and cinema, between tangible realities and our collective imaginations.

Ekiem Barbier is a versatile composer and filmmaker who completed his education in drawing and video at the Montpellier Fine Arts School, graduating in 2017. His creative portfolio includes short fiction and animation films, and he has contributed to various collective exhibitions. Barbier’s directorial works include ANENT (2017) and Marlowe Drive (2017). His most recent project, Knit’s Island (2023), was a collaborative effort with Guilhem Causse and Quentin L’helgoualc’h, and premiered at Visions du Réel and since then screened worldwide, to great critical acclaim. 

Quentin L’helgoualc’h is an artist whose work spans the realms of cinema, drawing, digital imagery, and sculpture, exploring the interplay among these mediums. His artistic inquiries reflect on the societal role of the artist, interlaced with personal fantasies and challenges posed by new technologies. L’helgoualc’h co-directed Marlowe Drive (2017) and  Knit’s Island (2023), with Ekiem Barbier and Guilhem Causse.

Guilhem Causse explores the intricate relationship between image and sound. Influenced by science fiction, photography, and concrete music, Causse crafts immersive environments characterized by void and resonance, populated with enigmatic forms. He co-directed Marlowe Drive (2017), and Knit’s Island (2023), with Ekiem Barbier and GQuentin L’helgoualc’h.

EVENT: BRAM RUITER (JANUARY 19—FEBRUARY 1 2024, ONLINE)

Endless Sea

digital video, color, sound, 6’ 59”, 2015 (2023), The Netherlands

Created by Bram Ruiter

Bram Ruiter’s experimental 2015 work Endless Sea was originally shot with/in a modified version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Rockstar Games, 2004). Yet rather than depicting the crime simulations and violence the game was originally designed for, Ruiter harnesses expanded weather and free camera tools to craft an oneiric aesthetic experience outside gameplay norms. Through prismatic neon haze and perpetual storms visualized with heightened cinematic focus, the 6-minute conceptual work inhabits an ambivalent space between the game’s assumed freedoms and underlying restrictions. As the perspective drifts, glides, pursues unknown figures through the deserted streets, a disquieting sense of surveillance, pursuit and entrapment permeates the mood. Repeated cryptic references to the endless sea itself seems to signal the infinite confines of San Andreas, though whether the despairing urge to break free springs from the player or the lone avatar remains ambiguous. Ultimately Ruiter undermines the promised openness of Rockstar Games’ sandbox architecture by exposing its boundaries through tonal manipulation. Endless Sea is presented on VRAL in a never-seen-before, 2023 remastered edition.

Bram Ruiter is an experimental filmmaker based in Zwolle, the Netherlands, who creates collage-like cinematic morphologies that examine themes of creation, contradictions, labor, and the unfinished or incomplete. Fascinated by marginal objects and obsolescent procedures, his work incorporates non-traditional materials and broken aesthetics. Ruiter's films have screened internationally at festivals including the Viennale, Karlovy Vary, Pesaro Film Fest, Fantastic Fest Austin, A.Maze Berlin, and the Netherlands Film Festival. Ruiter also teaches filmmaking at ArtEZ University of the Arts, both at graduate and undergraduate level. 

EVENT: CHRIS KERICH (OCTOBER 27—NOVEMBER 9 2023, ONLINE)

Three Impossible Worlds

digital video, color, sound, 2022, 11’ 14”, United States

Created by Chris Kerich

A speculative digital art project that probes the underlying logic and limitations of procedural world generation Three Impossible Worlds was developed with/in the popular video game Minecraft. The artist began by conceptualizing a series of thought experiments: worlds deemed “impossible” within Minecraft’s existing generative framework. By subverting the game’s expected parameters, Three Impossible Worlds surfaces latent politics and ingrained assumptions coded into procedural systems.

Chris Kerich is a programmer and artist living and working in Lethbridge, Alberta. Kerich is interested in systems, constrained art, information, critical science studies, and video games. Chris is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Lethbridge. He received his doctorate from the program in Film and Digital Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and he has received a Master of Arts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017 and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2013. Kerich’s creative endeavors have garnered international recognition and have been featured in retrospectives and events like the Milan Machinima Festival (2021, 2019, Milan, Italy) and Vector Festival (2018, Toronto, Canada).