MER ROSE CLAIRE
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 17’ 39”, 2020 (France)
Created by Isabelle Arvers, 2020
Introduced by Gemma Fantacci
Mer Rose Claire is part of Arvers’ ongoing abstract machinima series La Mer (2016-) which depicts shapes and abstract landscapes created by the Moviestorm game engine. Evocative of peaceful marine scenes, these videos produce an hypnotic effect on the viewer as abstract patterns, their folding and unfolding, become a generative matrix of what Georges Perec called species of spaces. This mesmerizing, rhythmic movement alters the viewer’s perceptions.
Isabelle Arvers is a French artist and curator whose research focuses on the interaction between art and video games. For the past twenty years, she has been investigating the artistic, ethical, and critical implications of digital gaming. Her work explores the creative potential of hacking video games through the practice of machinima. As a curator, she focuses on video games as a new language and as an expressive medium for artists. She curated several shows and festivals around the world, including Machinima in Mash Up (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2016), UCLA Gamelab Festival (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2015, 2017), Evolution of Gaming (Vancouver, 2014), Game Heroes (Alcazar, Marseille, 2011), Playing Real (Gamerz, 2007), Mind Control (Banana RAM Ancona, Italy, 2004), and Node Runner (Paris, 2004). In 2019, she embarked on an art and games world tour in non western countries to promote the notion of diversity of gender, sexuality and geographic origin, focusing on queer, feminist, and decolonial practices.
ZO
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 7’ 21”, 2017 (United Kingdom)
Created by Bob Bicknell-Knight, 2017
December 31 2020 - January 14 2020
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
An artist and an internet bot called Zo converse on the fictional social media app Kik. Their exchange is punctuated by short sequences of high-tech environments mostly devoid of human life taken from the Mass Effect video game series. The conversation, which focuses on artificial intelligence and the difference between being a robot and a human being, is reminiscent of a famous scene from the original Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.
Bob Bicknell-Knight is is a London based artist, curator and writer, working in several mediums including installation, sculpture, video, and digital media. His work is influenced by surveillance capitalism and responds to the hyper consumerism of the internet. Utopia, dystopia, automation, surveillance and digitization of the self are some of the themes that arise through his critical examination of contemporary technologies. Recently, he’s been undergoing a number of projects, from researching how drone technology is slowly re-shaping humanity to depicting tech billionaires as trophy hunters, alongside creating a body of work concerning the multinational technology company, Amazon, and its treatment of its employees within Amazon Fulfillment Centers around the world. Bicknell-Knight is also the founder and director of isthisit?, a platform for contemporary art, exhibiting over 800 artists since its creation in May 2016. Selected solo and duo exhibitions include Eat The Rich at Galerie Polaris, FR (2021), Pickers at INDUSTRA, Brno, CZ (2021), Bit Rot at Broadway Gallery, Letchworth, United Kingdom (2020), The Big Four at Harlesden High Street, London (2019), Wellness, Ltd. at Galerie Manque, New York (2019), State of Affairs at Salon 75, Copenhagen (2019), CACOTOPIA 02 at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2018), Sunrise Prelude at Dollspace, London (2017) and Are we there yet? at Chelsea College of Art, London (2017). Bicknell-Knight has spoken on panel discussions and given artist talks at Contemporary Calgary, Canada, Tate Modern, London, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Camberwell College of Arts, London and Goldsmiths, University of London among others.
MY OWN LANDSCAPES
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18', 2020 (France)
Created by Antoine Chapon, 2020
December 11 - December 24 2020
Introduced by Luca Miranda
Warfare is being gamified. The American army has been recruiting soldiers through video games since the early zeroes: America’s Army is, after all, the title of a popular video game. Recruits are trained with digital simulations and use game-like controllers to launch countless attack strikes via drones in remote lands: systemic murder by proxy. Even soldiers fighting on actual battlefields cannot escape the video game curse: those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are subsequently treated with digital simulations. But in My Own Landscapes, Chapon tells a different story: Cyrille creates and inhabits a virtual island, an utopian landscape where the soldier and his peers can escape reality, find illusory solace, and create a different identity: in fact, his experience is narrated by a female voice over. However, several paradoxes remain.
Antoine Chapon is a French artist and filmmaker based in Paris. He studied fine art, philosophy and social studies. In 2019, he learned literary Arabic at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. His work questions the relationship between fact and fiction, the role of the archive, and new technologies in documentary, and the possibility of making new forms in the age of digital reproduction. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Open Codes: The World as a Field of Data at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Museum. His first film My Own Landscapes (2020) won the award for best short film at the Visions du Réel Festival in Nyon, and the award for best short documentary film at the Norwegian Short Film Festival. It was also presented at the 2020 Torino Film Festival.
ARCHITECTURE WITH GAMES IN THE TITLE
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18' (6’ X 3), 2020 (Croatia)
Created by Mario Mu, 2020
November 26 - December 10 2020
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Architecture with Games in the Title focuses on the convergence between spatial memory and the architecture of games through the narrative framework of a dialogue. Mu compares the casualties of financial crises to video game players, forced to navigate a rigidly controlled “gamified” setting where trial-and-error is glorified as the only way to reach symbolic “achievements”. Created with Unity 3D, the scene depicts an office space replete with desks, computers, chairs, and other amenities of the modern working environment. Walls appear and disappear depending on the location of unseen characters, the “flexible workers” of the neoliberal world. This is a space without shadows, at once bright, warm, and phantasmatic. As the unseen characters engage in a conversation about architecture and memory, bots and ghosts, the environment slowly burns.
The artistic practice of Croatian artist Mario Mu revolves around projects which are often constructed as extended gaming platforms. In addition to sound and drawing, his preferred media often include elements of game design, 3D animation, and performance. A student of Hito Steyerl, Mu received an MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin in 2017, a BFA with a major in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in 2015, and an MA from the Faculty of Graphic Arts in 2012 from the same institution. Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was an active member of the Research Center for the Proxy Politics in Berlin. He has been working on several LARP events as an author, collaborator and/or performer at Play Co London and Zagreb, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, Galerie gr_und, Acud, and UdK in Berlin. Mu is currently working on a new game project initiated by the Portuguese artist Odete and supported by Maat Museum and Boca Bienal.
CHEATIMERISM
Digital video, color, sound, 14’ 55’’, 2020 (Italy)
Created by Luca Miranda
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
By reconfiguring the spaces of Grand Theft Auto V, Cheatimerism investigates the political and economic implications of consumption and its side effects, including concrete waste, virtual surrogacy, and planned obsolescence. This machinima shows various sculptural forms made of identical vehicles, the Rapid GT, a sports car, and a waste collection truck, the Trashmaster. Capitalism, the artist seems to suggest, is the ultimate cheat mode.
Luca Miranda’s practice focuses on the relationship between reality and simulation. He is especially interested in the aesthetic potential of the avatar. In his work, Miranda critically investigates game mechanics and concepts such as immersion, identification, and interpassivity. Miranda received a B.A. in Media and Art from the University of Bologna and in 2019 received a M.A. in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, an artistic collective based in Milan. He is currently working on book about walking simulators.
