EVENT: EDWIN LO (DECEMBER 6—19 2024, ONLINE)

End Time and The Trajectories of Ancestors

digital video, color, sound, 34’ 26”, 2022, Hong Kong.

created by Edwin Lo

A machinima video essay that intertwines fragments of Native American history with digital landscapes using Far Cry 5 (2018), End Time and The Trajectories of Ancestors explores themes of religious survivalism, cultural memory, and land representation within digital spaces. By overlaying Far Cry 5 ’s depiction of the state of Montana with archival records and testimonies, the project interrogates how video games engage with colonization, land appropriation, and cultural violence, while reclaiming virtual spaces to amplify marginalized voices.

Edwin Lo is an artist and researcher whose practice spans video, image, installation, sound, and video games. His work recontextualizes video games as dynamic spaces for artistic exploration, rather than treating them as static texts. Lo’s approach integrates sound, machinima, and thematic investigations into technology, faith, and the human condition, resulting in a layered, multifaceted engagement with digital media. He holds a Master of Arts from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, and his work has been exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include presentations by the Goethe-Institut and Para/site in Hong Kong, Palais de Tokyo, Tokyo Arts and Space, the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, Loop Barcelona, Image Forum, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin. Lo currently lives and works in Hong Kong.

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: KADIR KAYSERILIOĞLU (JANUARY 21 - FEBRUARY 3 2022, ONLINE)

Wolfpath.exe

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 4’ 04”, 2017, Turkey

Created by Kadir Kayserilioğlu

January 21 - February 3 2022

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Updating a traditional origin myth through video game aesthetics, Wolfpath.exe is a meta-commentary on contemporary Turkey from the perspective of a young artist engaging with technology, popular culture, politics, and folklore. By directly confronting the technical and ideological constraints of Far Cry 5, a popular video game developed by French giant Ubisoft and a “paradigmatic example of the politics of videogames in the face of an ongoing ‘anti-progressive/anti-feminist backlash’ in the United States” — as Sören Schoppmeier convincingly argues in his essay “Playing to Make America Great Again: Far Cry 5 and the Politics of Videogames in the Age of Trumpism” — Wolfpath.exe forces the viewer to rethink the impact of game culture on the collective imaginary.

Born in 1987 in Istanbul, Kadir Kayserilioğlu received a B.A. in Graphic Design and an M.A. in Fine Arts from Yeditepe. He is currently pursuing a Doctorate program at Marmara University, while making and exhibiting art in Turkey and elsewhere. His practice is grounded in the idea that play operates across a wide range of forms including video games and collaborative, performance-based video and imagery. His works often rely on a combination of instructions and protocols on one hand, and collective improvisational processes and chance operations on the other. This often results in works that challenge conventional notions of authorship and authority, imbued with a dark humoristic style, showing irreverence towards traditional hierarchies between forms of high and popular culture, assembling high production value with home made and DIY esthetics. His areas of investigation include the nature of social reality, gender, identity politics, populist tactics, posthumanism and micro-stories. He often engages in strategies of the absurd, repurposing mythological narratives as well as science fiction and horror tropes towards a critical take on contemporary political dynamics.

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