ROAD OF FEELINGS
digital video (1920x1080), color, sound, 8’18”, 2022, Poland
Created by Zuza Banasińska
A teenage girl’s room. When she ingests a handful of pills, it start to grow. Normally, as she works out, 1,2,3... 1,2,3... 1,2,3... her muscles can carry stones. Now, they are literally carried. The room walks with her as she touches the ground. In the rhythm of the workout, the walls open up and start chewing the world. Road of Feelings is a video animation created with the Unity 3D engine as part of the artistic collective Ellen Muscle’s LARP (Live Action Role Playing). The scenario was based on a queer-feminist narrative, set in a world where extreme muscle growth is encouraged, especially for teenage girls. Every girl has to take pills that enhance body musculature. Some teens begin to overdose, shortly discovering that the phenomenon enables them to produce hybridized connections. Those hybridizations happen through the muscles themselves. Teens start building and experiencing global networks between things and beings.
Zuza Banasińska (b. 1994) is an audio-visual artist making video-based environments. In her works, virtual and real elements are hybridized beyond distinction in an effort to move from representation towards affective mapping. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Universität der Künste in Berlin, and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2020, she won first prize in the Polish Experimental section at Short Waves in Poznań and On. Art in Wrocław. Her works have been shown at the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Czech Republic and Blindside in Melbourne. She lives and works in Poland.
HALO
digital video, color, 5’ 55”, 2016 (United States)
created by Cassie McQuater
May 14 - 27 2021
Introduced by Gemma Fantacci
In these six animated paintings presented as a single channel video, the artist reenacts situations and motifs from the first-person shooter series Halo and the erotic videogame Dream Stripper. Conceived as a dynamic, virtual collage, HALO shows short stock animation loops of characters dying over and over, with koi, dining chairs, asteroids, guns, flowers, torches, pinball machines, candles, and discarded pillows floating around them, creating a hypnotic motion.
Cassie McQuater is an American artist working with digital media, developing and designing video games and other interactive pieces and installations. Her practice involves hours of surfing the net, mining for digital artifacts, and repurposing them as a way to reflect on and reinvent our relationship with interactive storytelling. McQuater won the Nuovo Award (plus an honorable mention for Excellence in Design) at the 2019 Independent Games Festival for her browser-based game Black Room. Her work has been exhibited internationally. McQuater lives and works in Los Angeles.
RAPID TRANSIT: PREFACE
digital video, color, sound, 13’, 2020
Created by Victor Morales. Music: Daniel Dobson. Voices: Modesto Jimenez and Christine Schisano. Written by William Burns.
April 25 - May 7 2020
VRAL
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
WORLD PREMIERE
What is it like to ride the New York City subway thirty years from now? Victor Morales predicts that most travellers will wear VR/AR displays combined with electric stimulants or lectrics. But the subway itself has not changed much nor its rituals: passengers ignore each other while dancers perform to rhythmless soundtracks interrupted by beeps and synthetic shouts popping out of devices like rings and bracelets featuring holograms with hovering capabilities. On a late weekday night, a rider under the influence boards the train, unbeknownst to what is about to happen.
Born in Venezuela and based in New York City since 1991, Victor Morales is a director, performer, and designer. His practice includes theater direction, video design, animation, text, sound design, and digital puppetry. He collaborated on a variety of projects with Chris Kondek (Berlin), Joseph Silovsky (NYC), Jim Findlay (NYC), Findlay/Sandsmark (Norway), and Wolfgang Mitterer (Austria). Since the early aughts, Victor has been using video game engines to create interactive and non-interactive artworks. His multidisciplinary project Esperpento was selected for the Sundance 2019 New Frontier program and received the “Best Immersive and Time Based Art” award at the B3 Biennial at the Buchmesse in Frankfurt, Germany.
We are happy to announce VRAL, a uniquely curated game video experience, available for free on the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL website.
VRAL offers screenings of machinima created by artists and filmmakers whose work lies at the intersection of video art, cinema, gaming, and other visual practices.
The program features exceptional machinima selected based on their cultural relevance, artistic achievement, and innovative style. Often presented only in the context of festivals, exhibitions, and surveys, these works best represent the variety, ingenuity, and creativity of game-based video practices.
A space providing access to diverse and innovative voices, VRAL is an online-only supplement to the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL. Throughout the year, VRAL celebrates a new generation of digital filmmakers and artists engaging with video game-based technologies, aesthetics, and practices.
The project comprises exclusive interviews, image galleries, and an archive.
VRAL begins April 25 2020 with the world premiere of Rapid Transit: Premiere by Victor Morales.
