NEWS: THIS IS NOT A GAME AT MMF MMF MMXXII

We are delighted to announce that Arne Vogelgesang’s groundbreaking desktop documentary/performance THIS IS NOT A GAME will be featured at MMF MMXXII

Alternate Reality Games (ARG) combine reality and fiction in interesting and startling ways. Based on interactive structures, ARGs incorporate a very wide range of media, and generate a strong compulsive effect on the players who (help) shape the game by researching and exchanging information. ARGs use the individual lives of the players as their true gaming platform, thus forming active and enduring communities. What has this got to do with QAnon? Since this myth, which has also established itself as a brand, became widespread, numerous observers have pointed out how it operates on similar principles to Larping (Live Action Role Playing). In QAnon one can find elements of both LARPs and ARGs combining to create a new form. Arne Vogelgesang guides us through stories that shape reality and examines the growth of QAnon primarily in the context of the evolution of US politics.

Arne Vogelgesang is a director and founder-member of the theater label internil. He has created freelance theater work under this and other names since 2005, experimenting with a various composites of documentary material, new media and performance. Key themes in his work include political radicalization, deviant practices and the digitization of what is human. He also works as a video artist and in cultural education, publishes literary texts and presents lectures and workshops on the aesthetics of radical internet propaganda.

This program is presented by GAME OVER: CRITICA DELLA RAGIONE VIDEOLUDICA (2020)

Watch an excerpt below:

EVENT: GRAYSON EARLE (DECEMBER 10 - 23 2021, ONLINE)

Why don't the cops fight each other?

digital video, color, sound, 9’ 41”, 2021, United States of America, 2021

Created by Grayson Earle

Made with support from Media Art Exploration and Akademie Schloss Solitude

Why don’t the cops fight each other? is a desktop documentary that chronicles the attempt by the artist to modify the behavior of virtual police officers within Grand Theft Auto V. This work also engages the modding scene that emerged around Grand Theft Auto, a community of people creating tools to modify the game’s environment, characters, and mechanics. While these mods allow for an almost infinite manipulation and transformation of the game features, one attribute seems completely immutable: the police officers in the game will never fight each other. Through an exhaustive forensic analysis of the game’s source code and interactions with mod developers, the artist illustrates the extent to which the cultural imaginary concerning the real world police is projected into the game space.

Born in California, Grayson Earle is a new media artist and educator. After graduating from the Hunter College Integrated Media Arts MFA program, he worked as a Visiting Professor at Oberlin College and the New York City College of Technology, and a part-time lecturer at Parsons and Eugene Lang at the New School. A member of The Illuminator Art Collective, Earle is the co-creator of Bail Bloc (2017), a computer program that bails people out of jail and Ai Wei Whoops! (2014), an online game that allows the player to smash Ai Weiwei’s urns. In 2020, he hacked the Hans Haacke career retrospective exhibition at the New Museum to criticize the Museum's efforts to union bust its employees. His artworks have been exhibited internationally. He is currently residing in Berlin, Germany, as a participant in the forthcoming Berlin Program for Artists.

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EVENT: VRAL#10_EDWIN LO (OCTOBER 2-OCTOBER 15 2020)

CRUCIFIXION AND EPIPHANY

digital video, color, sound, 22’ 59”, 2020 (Hong Kong)

Created by Ewin Lo

Introduced by Luca Miranda

A follow up to Those Who Do Not Remember The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It (2020) and The Rupture of Promised Land (Or We Can Never Get There) (2020), Crucifixion and Epiphany is a commentary on religious iconography through the lenses of video games and archival materials. Using the format of desktop documentary, Lo disrupts the conventional dichotomies – real vs. simulacral, fiction vs. fantasy – to visually articulate the “downfall of mankind” narrative. Following Kevin B. Lee’s dictum that desktop cinema has cinematic aspirations but operates as a blank canvas, Lo’s screen performance is a captivating and multi-layered visual experience. Crucifixion and Epiphany is a creative (re)mix of multiple sources, a hybrid of machinima, desktop cinema, and archival footage. A study in media res, this work is the outcome of an experimental practice that resembles the vernacular obsession for narrativizing the so-called lore of popular fantasy video games on YouTube and Twitch.

Edwin Lo is an artist and researcher working with sound in various contexts and media such as performance, text, recording, video, installation and video games. Lo received a Master of Arts from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His work was exhibited in several countries, including Hong Kong, United States, Berlin, Tokyo, Shenzhen, Paris, Brazil, Switzerland, Sweden, and Shanghai. His work was presented by the Goethe-Institut and Para/site in Hong Kong, the Tokyo Arts and Space, the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago, Loop in Barcelona and Meinblau Projektraum in Berlin. His artist residencies include China, Germany, Japan. Lo lives and works in Hong Kong.

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Media coverage: Matteo Lupetti, ArtTribune (in Italian)