MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXI
FROM VIDEO GAMES TO VIDEO ART
March 15-21 2021
Online event
Milan, Italy
An official event of the Milan Digital Week, the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL showcases audiovisual non-interactive works produced with video games otherwise known as machinima. This year, the retrospective will take place exclusively online due to the ongoing pandemic. The program feature six sections: IN FOCUS, GAME VIDEO ESSAY, GRAND THEFT CINEMA, [CODE] CONFINEMENT, GLITCH 'N SCAPES, and SPECIAL SCREENING. Selected artists include Iono Allen, Adonis Archontides, Nilson Carroll, Nick Crockett, Luca Giacomelli, Gina Hara, Kamilia Kard, Chris Kerich, Felix Klee, Eddie Lohmeyer, Luca Miranda, Alessandra Porcu, Riccardo Retez, Alessandro Tranchini, Lena Windisch, XUE Youge (薛 又 戈), and HU Yu (胡 煜).
The main theme of the MMXXI edition, From Video Games to Video Art, alludes to the variety of artistic manipulations of video games and their evolution into game videos. The authors deconstruct digital environments by subverting and reinterpreting their constitutive codes. From a matrix of postmodern cinematic citations embedded in Grand Theft Auto V to the notion of “limbo” as an existential condition, the selected machinima critically examine the logic, politics, and ideologies of the contemporary moment, triggering unexpected epistemological short circuits.
As in previous years, a Critics’ Choice Award will be awarded to the most significant machinima by an international jury composed of critics, curators, and academics: Valentino Catricalà (Artistic Director of the Media Art Festival in Rome), Marco De Mutiis (Digital curator of the Fotomuseum Winterthur), Stefano Locati (member of the Scientific Committee of the Ca 'Foscari Short Film Festival of Venice and Co-director of the Asian Film Festival of Bologna), Henry Lowood (Curator for the Germanic Collections and the History of Science and Technology Collections at Stanford University), and Jenna NG (Professor of Film and Interactive Media at the University of York).
Curated by Matteo Bittanti with Gemma Fantacci, Luca Miranda, and Riccardo Retez, the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL 2021 is an official event of Milano Digital Week organized in collaboration with GAMESCENES. Art in the age of video games and the M.A. in Game Design at IULM University. A follow-up to the 2016 exhibition GAME VIDEO/ART. A SURVEY, the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL brings to Milan idiosyncratic video works that lie at the intersection of video art, cinema, streaming, and digital games.
All the works will be accessible for free on festival website from 15 to 21 March 2021.
REASONABLE_3
digital video (1920 x 1080), sound, color, 3’ 33”, 2020 (United States/Italy)
Created by COLL.EO
VRAL
February 12 - February 25 2021
Introduced by Random Parts
Fiery. Flaming. Heated. In flames. Sizzling. Gleaming. Alight. Ignited. Automobile. Car. Wagon. Truck. Van. Law Enforcement. Siren. Horn. Warning. Brawl. Storm. Disturbance. Turbulence. Turmoil. Uproar. Commotion. Emergency. Scene. Shots. Scream. Screech. Howl. Wail.
COLL.EO is a collaboration between Colleen Flaherty and Matteo Bittanti established in 2012. COLL.EO currently operates in San Francisco and Milan. Californian artist Colleen Flaherty is known for her large scale abstract paintings and for her wood sculptures which engage the viewer on a physical - rather than purely visual - level. She received her M.F.A. in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002 and her B.F.A. Cum Laude, with emphasis in Painting and Drawing, Minor in Music from San Jose State University in 1999. Flaherty' s works have been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Montevideo (Uruguay), and Pienza (Italy). Matteo Bittanti is an interdisciplinary artist based in San Francisco and Milan. His work lies at the intersection of gaming, cinema, and digital culture. Bittanti's conceptual pieces have been exhibited in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, Mexico, Scotland, France, and Italy. In 2012, he started COLL.EO with Colleen Flaherty.
FEATHERFALL
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 10’ 21”, 2019 (Austria)
Created by Total Refusal (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf), 2019
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Originally conceived as a video installation, Featherfall is presented on VRAL as a single channel machinima. Adopting the format of the video essay, the project began as an investigation of the relationship between game playing and dreaming, a recurrent topic in video game forums. In their psychoanalytic examination sui generis, Austrian collective Total Refusal (Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf) suggest that games and dreams have much in common. Featherfall focuses on the archetypal nightmare of falling, which in video games is often exacerbated by a recurring programming error otherwise known as a glitch which causes the player’s alter ego to suddenly disappear beneath the surface, plummeting into a void. This weird phenomenon is known to persist in the players’ subconscious and to resurface in their dreams, like a curse.
Total Refusal is Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf. In their practice, they critically analyze and appropriate digital game spaces and recontextualize them. Moving within games but ignoring the intended gameplay, Total Refusal allocates these resources to new activities and narratives, in order to create “public” spaces imbued with critical, even subversive potential. Leonhard Müllner works as an artist in the public and digital space and is currently writing his doctoral thesis at the Linz Art University at the Institute for Art and Cultural Studies. Robin Klengel works in Graz and Vienna as an interdisciplinary artist, illustrator, cultural anthropologist and vice president of the Forum Stadtpark. Michael Stumpf studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and now is an artist, designer and cultural theorist.
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.
