EVENT: THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S GUIDE TO LOS SANTOS (MAY 25 - JUNE 23 2024, LENZBURG, SWITZERLAND)

Image courtesy of Mattia Dagani Rio, 2023

What does it feel like being a photographer in Los Santos? A new group exhibition aptly titled The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos which will be featured at the Lenzburg Fotofestival in Lenzburg, Switzerland, from May 25 to June 23, 2024, tries to answer that very question. Turns out there are many answers.

The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos

May 25 - June 23 2024

Curated by Marco De Mutiis and Matteo Bittanti

Thu-Fri: 2-5 PM
Sat-Sun: 10 AM–5 PM

Dammweg 19
5600 Lenzburg
Switzerland

The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos interrogates the ontological boundaries between physical and virtual spaces through an examination of photographic practices within the context of Rockstar North’s record-breaking 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V. Situating Los Santos as a simulacrum of Los Angeles — the epicenter of global image production —, the exhibition explores the emergence of this fictional locale as a site of artistic experimentation and critical inquiry.

Curated by Marco De Mutiis, Digital Curator at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, and Matteo Bittanti, Associate Professor in Media Studies at IULM University in Milan, the exhibition explores the influence of video games — encompassing their aesthetics, logics, and tools — on photography, through the works by artists working at the intersection of post-photography, video games and art, including 2girls1comp, Raphael Brunk, Alan Butler, Mattia Dagani Rio, Elizabeth Desintaputri, Claire Hentschker, COLL.EO, and Georgie Roxby Smith.

Through meticulous in-game capture techniques and cunning manipulations of code, this cadre of international artists rupture the veneer of mimetic realism that shrouds Los Santos, opening fissures wherein the underlying algorithms and tacit ideological assumptions underpinning these contested spaces are hijacked. At once playful and critical, the featured projects — several of which have never been presented before — challenge the stability of categories such as the virtual, the real, and the hyperreal within an increasingly gamified culture.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an online resource and a database detailing significant post-photographic interventions within Grand Theft Auto V and, later on, a “how-to-photograph-the-virtual” critical guide.  

Read more about The Photographer’s Guide to Los Santos

EVENT: CHLOÉ DESMOINEAUX (NOVEMBER 26 - DECEMBER 9 2021, ONLINE)

LIPSTRIKE

live recording of online performance

digital video (1280 x 720), sound, color, 10’, 2021 [2016], France

Created by Chloé Desmoineaux

Originally created in 2016, Lipstrike is an online performance in Counter-Strike that uses an unusual device as a weapon: a lipstick. Each time the artist applies cosmetics on her lips, her gun unleashes a torrent of bullets. She broadcast her performances on Twitch, receiving thousands of snarky comments by angry gamers, which were subsequently collected and published in a limited edition booklet. Five years later, the artist has updated the original iteration for VRAL. One question remains: has anything changed since #Gamergate?

Interested in tactical media, hacking culture, and cyberfeminism, Chloé Desmoineaux creates media experiments through performances, installations, and hijacked video games. She is particularly concerned about the place given to women as well as dissident and “minority” people in the video game industry and she tries to create spaces of visibility and reflection to discuss these issues. She is a member of the Freesson Collective which focuses on supporting creative practices and electronic music. It also organizes events and workshops on digital art and culture. Co-organizer of the Art Games Demos (2017-2019) initiative with Isabelle Arvers, Desmoineaux has curated several exhibitions about the culture, aesthetics and ideology of gaming in the past decade. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She led several workshops on alternative controllers, glitch aesthetics, interactive animations, and video games. Desmoineaux lives and works in Marseille.

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EVENT: VRAL #32_JAMIE JANKOVIĆ, DEBORAH FINDLATER (OCTOBER 15 - 28 2021)

OUTSOURCING (MY DESIRES TO AVATARS)

digital video, color, sound, 3’ 58”, 2021, United Kingdom

Created by Jamie Janković and Deborah Findlater

Outsourcing (My Desires to Avatars) is a machinima and experimental video created by video artist Jamie Janković and writer, poet and director Deborah Findlater. The work is part of an ongoing project addressing the intersectionality of responses to female characters in video games; formally speaking, the work is presented as an audio-visual poem, accompanied by voice over. According to Janković, this work is meant as a response to found footage material of the character Christie from the popular fighting game series Dead or Alive (1996– ongoing). Moreover, the examination of the role of female characters in Outsourcing (My Desires to Avatars) is part of a larger project titled The identity quest series, in which the artist addresses a multiplicity of responses to female video game characters, following engagement in interviews with queer people within the gaming industry and exploring their own views on gender in game design.

Jamie Janković is a London-based filmmaker and video artist whose practice focuses on the dynamics of gender within video game worlds: in previous works, Janković has investigated the ways in which men are socially conditioned to their cultural model by visual media and explored through found footage technique how mainstream U.S. horror and sci-fi genres police masculinity through narrative and representation.

Deborah Findlater is a writer, poet, filmmaker and DJ from South London. As director, Findlater works with montage, installation and found footage in order to dissect the construction of narrative; as writer; as writer and DJ focuses on poetic qualities through its rhythmic use of voice, words and sound. Findlater artistic practice focuses on issues related to the working class, Blackness in Britain and Black Womxnhood.

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EVENT: VRAL #14_MARIO MU (NOVEMBER 27 - DECEMBER 10 2020)

ARCHITECTURE WITH GAMES IN THE TITLE

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18” (3x6’), 2020 (Croatia)

Created by Mario Mu, 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.

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