EVENT: GIATH TAHA (AUGUST 30—SEPTEMBER 12 2024)

BECOMING A GHOST

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 21’ 09”, 2022, Syria

created by Giath Taha

August 30 - September 12 2014

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

Originally a four-channel video installation and presented on VRAL as a single-channel video, Becoming a Ghostdocuments Syrian-born artist Giath Taha’s emotional reunion with his brother in the online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG). Separated for ten years due to the Syrian conflict, Taha and his brother reconnect in this digital warzone, which mirrors the real-life violence that forced Taha to flee Syria. Although the game involves players competing to be the last one standing, it paradoxically becomes a safe space for the brothers to discuss topics censored elsewhere. The work explores themes of presence and absence, reality and simulation, and how virtual spaces can offer temporary escape from harsh realities. Through their mediated interaction in PUBG, Taha and his brother create counter-narratives and find moments of connection despite their physical separation. Becoming a Ghost explores themes of presence and absence, reality and simulation, and the interplay between virtual and real-life experiences.

Giath Taha was born in Syria in 1982 and studied Photography and Applied Arts at the Walled Izzat Institute in Damascus and Literature at the University of Damascus, Syria. He subsequently graduated from the MA Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK) in The Hague in 2021. He received both the MA Artistic Research Department Award 2021 as well as the Royal Academy Master Award 2021 for his graduation work Becoming a Ghost (2021). Taha lives and works in Amsterdam.

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).

EVENT: SJORS RIGTERS (APRIL 22, MAY 5 2022, ONLINE)

THE VIRTUAL FRONTIER

digital video, color, sound, 3’, 2020, The Netherlands

Created by Sjors Rigters

vral.org

The popular video game Minecraft exemplifies the inner contradictions of the digital age. Lauded by many pundits as a highly creative form of entertainment, the so-called “digital LEGO” is a powerful vessel for neoliberal ideologies and hyper-capitalistic imperatives, with its frenzy of accumulation, extraction, circulation, production, and exploitation. An effective indoctrination tool now pervasive in thousands of US elementary schools, Minecraft is a techno-dream of endless growth, a manifesto for the perpetuation of devastating patterns of consumption, competition, and destruction. Informed by colonialist principles, its gameplay elevates numbing grinding routines into a recipe for the good life, casting the player as both a conqueror and an entrepreneur. In his video The Virtual Frontier, Dutch designer Sjors Rigters brings to the foreground the toxic message of one of the most successful video games of all time.

Sjors Rigters (b. 1995) is a graphic designer specializing in visual identity and editorial design. After receiving his BA in Graphic Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, he opened his own studio. Sjors lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

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EVENT: GRAYSON EARLE (DECEMBER 10 - 23 2021, ONLINE)

Why don't the cops fight each other?

digital video, color, sound, 9’ 41”, 2021, United States of America, 2021

Created by Grayson Earle

Made with support from Media Art Exploration and Akademie Schloss Solitude

 

Why don’t the cops fight each other? is a desktop documentary that chronicles the attempt by the artist to modify the behavior of virtual police officers within Grand Theft Auto V. This work also engages the modding scene that emerged around Grand Theft Auto, a community of people creating tools to modify the game’s environment, characters, and mechanics. While these mods allow for an almost infinite manipulation and transformation of the game features, one attribute seems completely immutable: the police officers in the game will never fight each other. Through an exhaustive forensic analysis of the game’s source code and interactions with mod developers, the artist illustrates the extent to which the cultural imaginary concerning the real world police is projected into the game space.

Born in California, Grayson Earle is a new media artist and educator. After graduating from the Hunter College Integrated Media Arts MFA program, he worked as a Visiting Professor at Oberlin College and the New York City College of Technology, and a part-time lecturer at Parsons and Eugene Lang at the New School. A member of The Illuminator Art Collective, Earle is the co-creator of Bail Bloc (2017), a computer program that bails people out of jail and Ai Wei Whoops! (2014), an online game that allows the player to smash Ai Weiwei’s urns. In 2020, he hacked the Hans Haacke career retrospective exhibition at the New Museum to criticize the Museum's efforts to union bust its employees. His artworks have been exhibited internationally. He is currently residing in Stuttgart, Germany, as a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

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