EVENT: FILIP KOSTIC (SEPTEMBER 29 - OCTOBER 12 2023, ONLINE)

Filip Kostic VS Filip Kostic

digital video, color, sound (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 16’ 28”, 2019, Serbia/United States

Created by Filip Kostic

Online premiere (new edit)

Filip Kostic VS Filip Kostic (2019) is a performative artwork by artist Filip Kostic, staged as a live Twitch stream. In the piece, Kostic plays a match of FIFA Soccer against Serbian athlete Filip Kostic, who shares his name and nationality. The prize at stake is the @filipkostic Instagram handle. For years, Kostic’s online identity was conflated with that of the athlete due to sharing a name and IMDb page. After being contacted by Kostic’s PR team to purchase his Instagram handle, the artist instead proposed this competitive FIFA face-off to settle the score. Presented as an eSports event, the Twitch stream featured a custom layout with sponsors and a halftime show performance. It is now presented on VRAL in a novel edit.

Filip Kostic is an interdisciplinary artist working across video, performance, sculpture, and interactive media. His video and new media works have been shown internationally at venues including Ars Electronica Festival, Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, and SPRING/BREAK Art Show. He has exhibited sculpture and installation works at galleries in the US and Europe. Kostic holds an MFA from Bard College and a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design, where he currently teaches in the Interaction Design and Fine Art departments. He has previously taught at Otis College of Art & Design and Cal State Northridge. From 2018-2021, he worked as a technical artist and game designer at WEVR on VR experiences for the Harry Potter franchise. Through his multimedia practice, Kostic invites viewers to examine and challenge assumptions about identity, reality, and the role of technology in shaping human experience. His work aims to collapse boundaries between the real and the simulated. Originally from Belgrade, Serbia, he is currently based in Los Angeles.

MMF MMXXIII: THE NEO AVANT-GARDE

INTRODUCED BY/INTRODOTTO DA MATTEO BITTANTI

INTERVIEWS BY/INTERVISTE DI MATTEO BITTANTI

MARCH 19-26 2023/19-26 MARZO 2023 (ONLINE)

The Neo Avant-Garde emerged in the 1950s and 1960s as a continuation and redefinition of earlier Avant-Garde movements from the early 20th century. Its artists sought to expand the definition of art by pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable and rejected traditional forms and techniques. They utilized new media and technologies, such as photography, film, and performance art, and emphasized collaboration and collective creation instead of the idea of the solitary genius artist. This led to new art forms, including happenings, installations, and conceptual art, which prioritized the viewer's experience.

Machinima, a filmmaking form that utilizes real-time computer graphics engines to create movies, shares several affinities with the Neo Avant-Garde in contemporary art. It challenges traditional boundaries between media, namely film, video games, theater, and other digital media by utilizing the language of the video game to create cinematic narratives that disrupt conventional notions of what constitutes a "film." Machinima also exemplifies the Neo Avant-Garde's collaborative ethos, with artists frequently working together to bring their visions to life.

The Neo Avant Garde program features cutting edge works by Babak Ahteshamipour, Iain Douglas, Mark Coverdale, Kara Güt, and Brenton Alexander Smith. Ahteshamipour’s In Search of the Banned Dictionaries that contain the Words for the Things You Wish you could Express but You are Unable to With Common Words reinvents self-representation by appropriating World of Warcraft. Kara Güt’s Hurt/Comfort explores the concept of confession through the lens of live-streaming. Brenton Alexander Smith's The Impossibility of Things Disappearing is a haunting vignette that defies easy categorization. 

Additionally, the Neo Avant-Garde program will showcase an onsite screening of Christian Wright's Body Language, exclusively at the Museum of Interactive Cinema on March 25, 2023. Purchase your ticket here.

Matteo Bittanti

WATCH THE ONLINE PROGRAM NOW

EVENT: KAMILIA KARD (DECEMBER 2 2022, 9 PM CET, LIVE)

The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL is delighted to announce its first machinima live performance on its brand new Twitch channel. Curated by Gemma Fantacci, the inaugural show is Kamilia Kard’s Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE. Join us tonight Friday December 2 at 9 pm Central European Time (CET)!

Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE is an online participatory performance created within Toxic Garden, a unique map designed by the artist for Roblox (Roblox Corporation, 2006) in which participants can perform a common dance by donning custom skins that change randomly. A visual commentary on toxic human behaviors, DANCE DANCE DANCE is inspired by the defense mechanisms of poisonous plants. Its development took place during the residency at Lavanderia a Vapore and it involved dancers who contributed in the creation of the choreography. Designed and developed by Kamilia Kard, aka KKlovesU4E. Music of the Performance by Raffaella Bresciani. Sound design of Toxic Garden’s map by Cristina Katja Angeloro.

Kamilia Kard is an artist and scholar based in Milan. Her research explores how hyper-connectivity and new forms of online communication have modified and influenced the perception of the human body, as well as our gestures, feelings and emotions. Her practice spans from digital paintings to websites, from video installations to 3D printed sculptures, from interactive virtual environments and video games to AR facial filters. Her work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, public spaces and online venues. Highlights include: A.dition Gallery, South Korea (2022), Careof, Milan (2021); Marséll, Milan (2021); Museo Pino Pascali, Polignano a Mare (2021); Milan Machinima Festival (2021); Galerie Odile Ouizeman, Paris (2020); Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris (2020); Dimora Artica, Milan (2020); Olomouc Museum of Art (2020); Metronom, Modena (2018, 2019 and 2020); EP7, Paris (2019); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2018); iMAL, Brussels (2018); Digitalive @ REF, Rome (2018); Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); Triennale di Milano (2017); Centro Cultural São Paulo (2017); La Quadriennale di Roma (2016); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2015); Hypersalon, Miami (2015); The Wrong Biennial, online (2014); Museo del Novecento, Milan (2013). She is the author of Arte e Social Media. Generatori di sentimenti (Postmedia Books 2022) and the editor of Alpha Plus. An Anthology of Digital Art (Editorial Vortex 2017). She often lectures about her artistic practice and research. She has a Ph.D in Digital Humanities (University of Genova), and she teaches Multimedia Communication and Aesthetics of New Media at Accademia di Brera in Milan, Italy.

To watch the perform, please visit

MMF_VRAL on Twitch

Kamilia Kard

Toxic Garden - DANCE DANCE DANCE

December 2 2022 at 9 PM CET, free

The edited video recording will be available on December 3 2022.

EVENT: SEBASTIAN SCHMIEG (JUNE 24 - JULY 7 2022, ONLINE)

Lights will guide you home

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 10’ 17”, 2022, Germany

Created by Sebastian Schmieg

On Twitch and YouTube, gamers stream their journeys over a replica of our world using flight simulators — some curious, others dutiful, and quite a few in the service of virtual airlines following official schedules. In the course of their missions, they are often guided by other gamers who participate as air traffic controllers. Sebastian Schmieg regularly watches both pilots and air traffic controllers and collects and archives their virtual work. In his video Lights will guide you home, pilots drive to the runway, accelerate, and take off, soaring into the skies of Microsoft Flight Simulator before landing safely at their destination – always accompanied by air traffic controllers.

Sebastian Schmieg investigates the algorithmic circulation of images, texts, and bodies. He creates playful interventions that penetrate the shiny surfaces of our networked society and explore the realities that lie behind them. Specifically, Schmieg focuses on labor, algorithmic management, and artificial intelligence. He works in a wide range of media including video, website, installation, artist book, custom software, lecture performance, and delivery service. Schmieg’s work has been exhibited internationally at The Photographers’ Gallery London, MdbK Leipzig, HeK Basel, and Chronus Art Center Shanghai. He lives and works in Berlin and Dresden.

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EVENT: VRAL #30_KARA GÜT (SEPTEMBER 17-30 2021)

WELCOME TO MY DESERT NEXUS (DEEP INSIDE MY DESERT HEART)

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 44’ 50”, 2021 (United States)

screen recording of a live/virtual performance at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York on June 13 2021

Created by Kara Güt

Welcome to My Desert Nexus is a three-act play performed within a video game, which follows two players within Red Dead Redemption Online as they encounter existential quandaries in the digital desert. Part table-read, part live gaming event, Welcome to My Desert Nexus combines the aesthetics of theater and video games. The original play consists of an in-person presentation performed live at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York on June 13 2021 resembling that of a live gaming event in which the players and their battle stations occupy the stage. Additionally, Welcome to My Desert Nexus was simultaneously streamed on the internet and accessible to anyone. The performance featured the four actors on stage controlling their avatars and reading their lines live. The narrator, in addition to controlling an avatar, performed live cuts via video switcher, allowing the screen to switch between the actors’ perspectives based on who was talking. This specific iteration of Welcome to My Desert Nexus, which is now presented on VRAL, starred Tommy Martinez as Charlie, Emma Levesque-Schaefer as Frances, Noah D’Orazio as Shepherd, and Kara Güt as Narrator. The original soundtrack was composed by Justin Majetich.

Kara Güt investigates the new contours of human intimacy shaped by an increasingly pervasive online lifestyle, constructed detachment from reality, and the power dynamics of the virtual. Using image and screen-based media, Güt explores the ontological necessity of certain digital spaces. She is specifically interested in how the patriarchal conversation within these contexts can be subverted by the artists and the participants’ intervention to generate new meaning. Working with video, screen capture, and the web, video games, and other digital spaces, Güt creates artworks that are sculptural in nature. She is interested in expressing the mythos of the digital and its manifestations in the physical realm. This notion – which takes the form of objects that play with language, translation, faux-intimacy, consumerism, and a metamorphosis born from the lore of digital, and internet lifestyles – informs her practice. A multidisciplinary artist with an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Güt is the recipient of the Peter MacKendrick Endowment for Visual Artists, Güt has been featured on Refigural Magazine, The Unstitute, and the Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography among others. Her work is part of the Cranbrook Art Museum collection as well as several private collections. Güt currently lives and works in Columbus, Ohio.

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