PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT
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PATREON-EXCLUSIVE CONTENT 〰️
VRAL is currently exhibiting Mikhail Maksimov’ The New Game Is Over. To better contextualize and appreciate his multi-layered oeuvre, we are examining recurring themes in the Russian avant-garde artist oeuvre. Today, we revisit Maksimov’s Infinite Graveyard (2020), which was presented on VRAL as a single channel video.
In the fall of 2020, Matteo Bittanti spoke with Mikhail Maksimov about his new interactive experience, Infinite Graveyard, an endless simulator of passing. The game, which developed and released during the Covid-19 pandemic, came to embody a period of global turmoil and transition. Predictably, the event also represents a missed opportunity for meaningful change. Since then, multiple crises have continued to mount: climate devastation, political paralysis, global conflict, the circus of billionaire-sponsored populism. As if the situation were not already bleak, a new kind of cinematic marketing campaign entitled Barbie has earned over one billion dollars at the box office. It is difficult not to feel a profound sense of despair about the current state of affairs. As Peter Turchin suggests, these times bear the hallmarks of an ending.
In this dreadful landscape is it useful to revisit Infinite Graveyard and the conversation with Maksimov, which felt very apropos in 2020, and clearly prophetic three years later. The Russian artist uses generative art and game elements to explore philosophical questions about death, space, technology, and architecture. He sees the generative process of cellular automata in Infinite Graveyard —which was presented on VRAL as a 666 minute long walkthrough — as representing death and entropy rather than life. The cemetery symbolizes the endless cycle of death. The work itself is meant as an oxymoron, with generative art typically associated with life creation being used to represent endless cessation and death. Today, Maksimov suggests, the creative act has become a record of destruction as creation itself is no longer possible.
This outcome has a myriad of implications, including many related to game design. For Maksimov, it is very important to subvert common video game tropes like respawning and disposable non-player characters to make philosophical statements…
Matteo Bittanti
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