Red Dead Redemption

MMF MMXXIII UPDATE: A CHAT WITH ANDREA GATOPOULOS

Happy New Year, Jim, the official poster

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The Milan Machinima Festival is excited to present Andrea Gatopoulos' award-winning Happy New Year, Jim, a metaphysical meditation on virtual worlds and social connection in the age of video games. The machinima was (mostly) shot with/in Red Dead Redemption 2 (Rockstar Games, 2018). 

Happy New Year, Jim will be exclusively screened at the Museum of Interactive Cinema on Saturday March 25 2023 as part of the Made in Italy special program. Buy your ticket here.

Born in Pescara in 1994, Andrea Gatopoulos is the founder of the production company Il Varco, with which he has produced eleven short films and two feature films. Currently, he is the artistic director of Il Varco - International Short Film Festival, chosen by FilmFreeway for its Top 100 Best Festivals in the World, and is also the creator of the Short Days and Nuovo Cinema Abruzzese film festivals. His productions have been selected in over one hundred festivals around the world. Among his films are Flores del Precipicio (2022), Polepole (2021), Letters to Herzog (2020), Materia Celeste (2019), Spettri (2017) and Onyricon (2015).

Matteo Bittanti discussed the creative process behind Happy New Year, Jim with the filmmaker, Andrea Gatopoulos. 

Matteo Bittanti: Can you describe your path and trajectory as a filmmaker? What led you to explore cinema as a medium as an artform?

Andrea Gatopoulos: I consider myself a very curious, even nerdy person, and I began with cinema because I was exploring editing softwares back in the day when I was very young, around 12, 13. At that time, the first phones with cameras were being released on the market and I remember playing them with my friends, mocking blockbuster films. During my high school years, it became a sort of job since I would make videos for small companies in my hometown, for my friends’ birthdays and for my school. I think they still use a video of mine to advertise the school. I didn’t realize what cinema exactly was until I enrolled into university so I’ve never been one of those cinephiles that grew up watching author cinema. My origin story is completely profane, so to speak.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Andrea Gatopoulos

Happy New Year, Jim 

digital video/machinima, color, sound, 9’, 2022, Italy

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NEWS: TOTAL REFUSAL WINS BEST DIRECTOR AWARD AT THE LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL ("PARDI DI DOMANI")

TOTAL REFUSAL’S HARDLY WORKING (2021) WON THE BEST DIRECTOR’S AWARD IN THE PARDI DI DOMANI SHORT FILM COMPETITION AT THE 2022 LOCARNO FILM FESTIVAL

A pungent critique on the labor conditions of NPCs in open world games — and specifically Red Dead Redemption 2 — Hardly Working is a meta-documentary on what would be called “extras” in a cinematic production: NPCs or non-player characters. In fact, the narrative function of such characters is limited, if not marginal and they seem to have no real agency or autonomy.

Hardly working is a 20 minute “ethnographic exploration of the work and daily life of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labor loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.”

As the artists explain:

Here a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, and a handyman are the four main characters of this film. With ethnographic precision, the film observes their daily work: a rhythm composed of loops that makes them work daily and tirelessly. Their work neither results in a product, nor does it change anything about their status quo. In light of Hannah Arendt description of ‘animal laborans’ – in contrast to the acting subject –, the NPCs as individuum are an exaggeration as their work performance actually manifests their status.

The Pardi di Domani competition is described by the curators as “a territory for expressive experimentation and innovative formal poetry, [which] showcases short and medium length films as world or international premieres. The section consists of three competitions: Concorso internazionale, with works by emerging filmmakers from all over the world; Concorso nazionale, for Swiss productions; and Concorso Corti d’autore, with short works by established directors.” This year, the Best Auteur Short Film was awarded to Big Bang by Carlos Segundo and the Best International Short Film prize went to Sovereign by Wara. Total Refusal’s well deserved award from one of the world’s most prestigious film festivals, is a major recognition for machinima as a form of art.

Originally founded by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf, Total Refusal describes itself as “a pseudo-marxist media guerilla focused on the artistic intervention and appropriation of mainstream video games. We upcycle video games in order to reveal the political apparatus beyond the glossy and hyperreal textures of this media.”

Read more about Hardly Working

Red more about Total Refusal

Images and videos courtesy of the Artists

ARTICLE: PERFORMING WITH/IN RED DEAD REDEMPTION

Elisa Sanchez, En mémoire de Dandelion, video, sound, 4’ 12”, 2021, France

Today is the last day to watch Elisa Sanchez' Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible on VRAL. To celebrate the conclusion of the exhibition, we look back at three artworks that appropriate and repurpose Red Dead Redemption.

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In the past few years, several artists have used Red Dead Redemption 2/Online to create remarkable, often unclassifiable works. Although Rockstar Games’ Wild West themed videogame is the common denominator, the artists’ approach, intent, and execution vary considerably. Let’s consider three examples: Marie Foulston’s The Grannies, Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus (Deep inside my desert heart), and Elisa Sanchez’ Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible.

Let’s start with The Grannies. A short documentary clocking at 17 minutes, the film was originally conceived as a two channel installation at Now Play This, a video game festival in London. It presents the experiences of a group of players calling themselves The Grannies as they discover a secret area of the game where “normal” (read: consistent with the designers’ original intentions) rules do not apply. The players use their avatar as a vessel to explore such bizarre and weird territory. Here the relationship between the player and the avatar is clear and unambiguous. The filmmaker’s emphasis is on the artificiality of the simulation and the unexpected materiality of ethereal game spaces. The Grannies is first and foremost a statement about the nature of video games made by expert players, i.e. Kalonica Quigley and Marigold Bartlett, Melbourne-based friends and game developers, along with friends and fellow game-makers Ian MacLarty and Andy Brophy. Formally speaking, the video maintains the split screen/dual screen format of the original installation, unlike the works by Güt and Sanchez, which follow a less hyper-mediated approach, thus resulting in a more immediate and “transparent” viewing experience.

Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus introduces an extra level of performativity. Based on an existing screenplay, it features a group of player-actors performing within the game Red Dead Redemption Online before a live audience. Gemma Fantacci describes Welcome to my Desert Nexus as a“three-act play combining different aspects of performance and online gaming, IRL acting, and avatar dramatization”. A commentary on the myth of the frontier - “a facade upon which the player could paint their fantasies, just as the frontier of digital space is a facade for the same. In thinking about the facade and the false promise of infinity” (Kara Güt) - Welcome to my Desert Nexus is primarily a live performance, one in which things could go wrong - both on a technical and practical level. The actors' performance is recorded and subsequently shown as a machinima. Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus is a groundbreaking hybrid of gaming and theater, literally and metaphorically redefining the notion of “play”, in physical and online spaces. The theatrical performance is imbued with liveness, that special kind of hic et nunc that Walter Benjamin calls the “aura” of the artwork and that Philip Auslander explored in his seminal text Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (1999). Although the play does feature meta referential elements (it was, after all, inspired by Sartre’s No Exit) , it is mostly consistent with the Wild West tropes and conventions of the original source, Red Dead Redemption. The actors maintain their in-character persona throughout the entire play….

Matteo Bittanti

(continues)

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ARTICLE & VIDEO ESSAY: Albert Mason or, in game-photography as "Manifest Destiny"...

Request for RDR2 mod, https://foundynnel.tumblr.com

…OR, the queering of in-game photography

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Red Dead Redemption 2 is set in 1899, when photography was still considered a “new medium” or, as the cliché goes, a “medium in its infancy”. In fact, the device that turned photography into a mass medium in the United States, the Kodak Brownie, was introduced a year later, in 1900. Photography nonetheless plays an important role within the context of the game. On a narrative level, it is embodied by the character of Albert Mason, a real-life nature photographer that the player first encounters in a quest entitled “Arcadia for Amateurs”. French artiste-astronaute Elisa Sanchez (2021) describes her encounter with Mason in her autobiographical essay:

“Arcadia for Amateurs” is a side mission where I met Albert Mason. Arcadia, a country of villages in the mountainous part of the Peloponnese in ancient Greece, has become a symbol of a primitive and idyllic place where people lived happily and in love. It is also the name of one of the first homosexual associations in France, which made me hope for a romance between Arthur and Albert. But, of course, there was no way to make Arthur Morgan anything other than a strict heterosexual.  

Albert Mason is an amateur photographer who wants to take pictures of the wildlife of the United States. Clumsy, knowing neither the fauna nor the flora, he solicits my help to protect him from the wild animals he wants to photograph. The romantic visions of the Wild West conveyed by the press and popular literature - which describe the splendid sunsets and the rough comradeship of the men of the frontier and yet ignore the massacre of the native population and the hardness of life - inspired man living in the Eastern cities like Albert Mason to try their luck in the West, in search of a more fulfilling life. 

Mason’s character was inspired by George Shiras III, who was the first to use flash photography, thanks to the explosion of magnesium powder, to photograph the night life of animals. Albert Mason dreams of the Wild West as Arcadia: a wild country, which has not yet known the throes of civilization, filled with magnificent animals that are waiting for him to be revealed. Albert displays a sense of wonder that is quite similar to the one I felt when I entered the game. As fascinated as he is, I observe with binoculars dozens of animals, listed in an encyclopedia that grows richer as I discover them. I pick flowers, track raccoons and get mauled by grizzly bears, and I can’t help but feel the beauty of the moonlight or the reflection of the sun in the streams with each step. Red Dead Redemption 2 is fully aware of its aesthetics and incorporates a photo mode which allows the player to capture images of the great wilderness.”

As Sanchez writes, the fictional Mason is indeed based on a historical figure, George Shiras III, like several other characters featured in the game. The “real” Shiras was born into a wealthy family in Alleghany, Pennsylvania, later becoming part of Pittsburgh, in 1859. His father, George Jr., was an attorney who served on the United States Supreme Court for eleven years. Shiras III attended the most exclusive schools in the country: he was an undergraduate at Cornell and — following in his father’s footsteps — received his law degree from Yale. He eventually became the U.S. Representative from the state of Pennsylvania. He was also an amateur wildlife photographer and his photos were featured in the National Geographic. In 1906, the influential magazine published 74 of his photographs and in 1928, Shiras donated 2,400 of his glass plate negatives, which are now part of the National Geographic Society archive. In turn, Shiras III’s award-winning Midnight — a suite of ten photographs of deer taken at night, all of which were taken from a boat using a jack light and illuminated by flashlight — were instrumental in the somehow controversial transformation of the National Geographic from a technical magazine into a mainstream publication (Brower, 2008, pp. 173-174)…

Matteo Bittanti

(continues)

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT AU-DELÀ DU DÉSERT FLOU, PLUS AUCUNE SAUVEGARDE N’EST POSSIBLE (PART TWO OF TWO)

What beliefs, ideologies, and values inform the most popular video game set in the Wild West? Elisa Sanchez, the author of Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde provides thought-provoking answers in a compelling essay in two parts.

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Watch Elisa Sanchez’ Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible

the first part of this essay is available here


Wild Wild West

In English, the word frontier does not only characterize the demarcation between two territories or two things, but designates a region or wilderness located on the edge or beyond a populated territory. This frontier is not a political or even a geographical delimitation. It is an area in motion, a space that moves with the population growth of white settlers. It is the West, with a capital W, always far, far away. It is a goal, a challenge, vast enough to absorb thousands of settlers and yet remain unconquered, eternally offering new adventures to those willing to risk their lives to experience them all. The frontier is a symbolic place, real and imaginary at the same time. It does not matter that its conquest was won at the expense of the land and its occupants.

In his 1893 article, the historian Frederick Turner discusses the importance of the frontier and westward expansion in the formation process of the American people: their identity and core ideas (e.g., democracy) are based on the idea of eradication. Specifically, the conquest of the West would consist of a double overcoming of borders, not only geographical, but also internal. The widespread popularization of his thesis on the frontier, which would make the one who overcomes it gain strength and individuality, has influenced a great number of narratives and folk stories, which describe the mythical Wild West by highlighting characters that are bearers of individualism and violence. Turner ignores gender and race, and says little about class. He sees the natives as an expression of the wilderness to be conquered at all costs. Like mountains, bears, and wolves, indigenous people consist of an obstacle to westward progress and self-realization.

The Indian was a common danger, demanding united action.

(Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, Martino Publishing, [1920] 2014)

Turner, and many others with him, subscribe to the idea that conquest and killing are conducive of human progress. They are a necessary price to pay, regrettable perhaps, but non negotiable. Only genocide can make humanity evolve. But by making the frontier an exclusively male and white phenomenon - thus excluding women and racialized people -Turner postulates that the only point of view that matters is that of the white settlers. To tell a story is to organize reality by assigning a unity of time and place, to allow some voices and silence others. The myth of the frontier provides a plot, as well as a direction: straight for the sun that sets the sky ablaze with purple and scarlet. But if one stares for too long ay the sun, one becomes blind.

On December 29, 1890, the U.S. Army surrounded a camp of Miniconjous Sioux at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. The soldiers searched the camp for weapons; caught in the grip of five hundred soldiers and four cannons, the Miniconjous had no choice but to comply. But during the search, a shot rang out and the army opened fire and machine-gunned the Miniconjous. Three hundred corpses were dumped a few days later in a mass grave; nearly half were women and children. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs attempted to portray the destruction of Wounded Knee as a battle, later investigations clearly established that it was a massacre; the Miniconjous Sioux were outnumbered, starved and unarmed. Yet some twenty soldiers who participated were awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest award given to a member of the U.S. armed forces. It was not until 2019 that these awards were rescinded.

I am Arthur Morgan, a strong, violent white man with a thick beard and two guns. I know this body is not mine, and yet. Where does Arthur Morgan, the avatar who rides tirelessly under beautiful sunsets, and Elisa Sanchez, who plays the game over and over again, begin? Arthur is not only the main character in the story I am being told; as a player, I am an active participant in the story and embody the character. His actions are my own, and while the roads we travel have been laid out by others, I choose to travel them…

[continues]

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT AU-DELÀ DU DÉSERT FLOU, PLUS AUCUNE SAUVEGARDE N’EST POSSIBLE (PART ONE OF TWO)

What beliefs, ideologies, and values inform the most popular video game set in the Wild West? Elisa Sanchez, the author of Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde provides thought-provoking answers in a compelling essay in two parts.

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Watch Elisa Sanchez’ Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible


The unbearable nostalgia of the setting sun

It is through the conquest of the West that the American notion of the frontier was constructed, one of the most enduring myths of our recent history. The frontier is cast as a horizon to be reached, to be seized, to be conquered, where one can fully realize oneself and, at the same time, fulfill the promise of a much greater destiny, a promise that entails the victory of civilization over the wilderness. By making this universe palpable to the point of outrageousness for the sheer pleasure of players, Red Dead Redemption 2, reintroduces the narrative of the frontier and its conquest which had informed the Wild West film genre for decades. But it also fails to provide something different, to rewrite this myth from a point of view that does not coincide with that of the conqueror.

In 1899, the mythical Wild West is living its last days. As a result of one of the most dramatic genocides of the history of mankind, native peoples have been chased off the plains to make way for white settlers; the forests were cut down for their wood, the hills gutted for their coal. In these apocalyptic times that accompany the end of the cowboy as a hero, I assume the role of Arthur Morgan, a member of an outcast crew led by Dutch Van Der Linde. I have a thick beard and two guns. I attack trains, rob banks, and pick flowers. I have died a thousand times and come back to life a thousand times more. I roam the territory where my story is set, crossing mountains and swamps, plains and deserts, always on the move, always searching.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is an action-adventure game, developed and published in 2018 by Rockstar Games. According to the game's official website, RDR 2 tells "an epic story set in the heart of the unforgiving wilderness of the United States," in a vast and immersive world. Every inch of this world has been meticulously thought out, every detail scrupulously studied to make it feel alive and authentic. RDR 2 required thousands of employees, eight years of development, 700 voice actors, 2,000 pages of script and 500,000 lines of dialogue.

It's an absurdly ambitious game that broke new records at launch. It’s an incredible achievement that required enormous effort and sacrifice. Rockstar Games’ studios have embraced an extreme work culture ethos, crunch squared: “voluntary” overtime and pressure to work more than they should. During the end credits, thousands of names scroll by, showing all the people who worked on the game. Well, almost all of them: these credits, a guarantee of visibility and recognition, are also a means of pressure. To see your name in the credits, you were required to keep you head down in the trenches until the end of the project. Few professions are characterized as a “passion job”, a qualification that would justify spending time and energy to be poorly, or not at all, remunerated.

The professions of video game developer and artist-author are among them.

Hic sunt dracones

At the beginning of the game, the map of my universe is covered by an opaque white fog, which will dissipate as I progress. This mist, so fragile and yet terribly thick, hides any relief, any city, any road. In medieval cartography, the expression hic sunt dracones (here are the dragons) was used to designate unknown or dangerous territories: where cartographers have not yet gone, monsters covered with scales remain…

[continues]

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NEWS: ELISA SANCHEZ (MAY 27 - JUNE 9 2022, ONLINE)

AU-DELÀ DU DÉSERT FLOU, PLUS AUCUNE SAUVEGARDE N’EST POSSIBLE

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound 43’, 2021, France

Created by Elisa Sanchez

“I’m tired of playing cowboy” says Elisa Sanchez, referring to her experience with Red Dead Redemption 2. To spice up things, she uses cheat modes and modifies the original game. And so she discovers weird architectures, bizarre landscapes, and bottomless rivers, among other things. Her metaphysical journey into the Wilder West to escape her “house arrest” due to the Pandemic lockdown becomes the stuff of legend. The result is a slow, contemplative, meditative machinima situated at the intersection of video art, video essay, and video diary. A warning: if you cross the blurred desert, you won’t be able to save your progress.

Born in Toulouse, France in 1997, Elisa Sanchez is likely France’s most well known artiste-astronaute and a recent graduate of the Haute école des arts du Rhin Mulhouse, Strasbourg. In 2021, she completed her thesis project entitled Le Cowboy et Le Astronaut under the supervision of Anne Foret. Her first machinima, Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible, was screened at the international film festival Cinéma du Réel in March 2022.

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NEWS: PHIL RICE ON OBIT

“With this short film, I set out to wrestle with an aspect of religion that has always troubled me. It is based on a true story, a real eulogy I heard delivered for someone I loved dearly. The incident, which happened nearly 30 years ago, filled me with anger and was a formative experience in my relationship to religion for the coming decades. It was valuable to revisit that event by way of this film, an event that still haunts me, but today through the lens of experience stirs emotions other than anger. Production of this film was challenging for the reasons most machinima work is challenging — in that the platform (game) was not designed to do what is shown here, and in fact seemed to work against me at every turn. When, after that kind of struggle, a finished product like this manages to emerge, there are few things more fulfilling.”

(Phil Rice)

Watch Obit now

“Con questo cortometraggio, volevo confontarmi con un aspetto della religione che mi ha sempre turbato. È basato su una storia vera, un autentico elogio funebre che ho sentito pronunciare per una persona a me molto cara. L’incidente, avvenuto circa trent’anni fa, mi ha riempito di rabbia ed è stata un’esperienza formativa nel mio rapporto con la religione per i decenni successivi. È stato prezioso rivisitare quell’evento attraverso questo film: si tratta di un evento che tuttora mi tormenta, ma che oggi, attraverso la lente dell’esperienza, suscita emozioni diverse dalla rabbia. La produzione di questo film è stata impegnativa per le ragioni per cui la maggior parte dei progetti machinima sono impegnativi — nel senso che la piattaforma (gioco) non è stata progettata per fare quello che voglio mostrare, e in effetti sembra remare contro a ogni step del processo. Ma al termine di una lunga lotta, quando ci si trova di fronte a un prodotto che soddisfa anche i giudici più critici, è difficile sperimentare qualcosa di più appagante.”

(Phil Rice)

NEWS: WELCOME TO MMF MMXXII

The fifth edition of the Milan Machinima Festival begins today with an online extravaganza.

The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXII returns with a hybrid format —both online and in situ screenings — after a long disruption in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. The festival program is now online: 25 works of machinima and game video created by 21 artists representing 9 countries are featured in two distinct sections — EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (March 26 2022, IRL) and FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online) — for a total of 11 programs.

Below is a breakdown of all the features:

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (Museum of Interactive Cinema, Milan, March 26 2022): MACHINEMA (MACHINE CINEMA), BRAND NEW YOU ARE RETRO, and MADE IN ITALY

FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online): THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE AI, BAD TALES, SONG TO SONG, GAME VIDEO ESSAY, IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES, HISTORIES/HERSTORIES, NO DRAMA, PLEASE, and GAME OVER PRESENTS: THIS IS NOT A GAME.

This year we’ll be unlocking the various features gradually, like levels of a video game. The online section comprises seven back-to-back features.

The first — THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE AI — features works by Phil Rice (US) and Beatrice Carpina (IT) and is now online .

Enjoy!

La quinta edizione del Milan Machinima Festival comincia oggi con una serie di proposte online.

Il MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL torna con un formato ibrido — proiezioni online e in situ — dopo una lunga interruzione causata da una crisi globale senza precedenti. Il programma è ora online e include 25 opere machinima e game video create da 21 artisti che rappresentano 9 nazioni. Le proposte sono presentate in due sezioni distinte — EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (26 marzo 2022, IRL) e FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (21-27 marzo 2022, online) — per un totale di 11 programmi.

Di seguito la selezione completa:

EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (Cineteca MIC, Museum del Cinema Interattivo, Milano, 26 marzo 2022): MACHINEMA (MACHINE CINEMA), BRAND NEW YOU ARE RETRO e MADE IN ITALY

FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (21-27 marzo 2022, online): THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE AI, BAD TALES, SONG TO SONG, GAME VIDEO ESSAY, IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES, HISTORIES/HERSTORIES, NO DRAMA, PLEASE,e GAME OVER PRESENTS: THIS IS NOT A GAME.

Quest’anno “sbloccheremo” le varie proposte in modo graduale, come se fossero livelli di un videogioco. La sezione online include sette programmi back-to-back.

La prima— THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE AI — presenta opere di Phil Rice (US) e Beatrice Carpina (IT) ed è ora accessibile online.

Buona visione.


A CLOSER LOOK AT WELCOME TO MY DESERT NEXUS

VRAL is presenting Kara Gut’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus as part of our Fall 2021 program. Welcome to my Desert Nexus, which will be accessible online until September 30, is a three-act play performed within a video game, focusing on 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 introduces theatrical forms of expressions, stimulating emotional responses in the audience, in the contexts of video games. The performance, which has a duration of 44’ 50”, is situated at the intersection of different spatialities, temporalities, and media. Among other things, the work is complemented by a script laser printed with custom stamped illustrations, saddle stitched and designed by fellow artist Clara Gatto with Bulk Space which was presented at Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair, 2021. The full script is accessible here in PDF form. Welcome to my Desert Nexus is indicative of the complexity of the video game form, which transcends the boundaries of the screen to engage multiple senses.

The intersection between theatre and digital gaming is becoming more and more prominent. In October 2020, amidst a global pandemic, Canadian playwright Celine Song performed Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull with/in The Sims 4 and broadcast her entire performance in two installments on Twitch, as part of New York Theatre Workshop’s Artistic Instigators program, which was introduced to support both creatively and economically artists unable to perform on stage due to Covid-19 restrictions. Song introduced alternative ways to experience the popular life simulator, blurring the boundaries between the performer’s body and the avatars acting on the screen.

More recently, a selected number of players of the popular post-apocalyptic video game Fallout 76 have begun reenacting scenes from popular movies and play, including A Clockwork Orange, Hamlet, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and West Side Story, and they are currently working on a major production of Macbeth. One of the most popular groups using Bethesda’s game as a stage is The Theatre Company, “operating the Charleston Playhouse Theatre, the Watoga Opera House, Grafton Globe, & Morgantown Moulin Rouge.” In all cases, these performance adopt a calmer, more distanced approach to the bleak themes of the original video game, ignoring its “established narratives”. Here’s an image of the troupe performing at Moulin Rouge theatre via their avatars (source: Twitter)

MOTH DANCE.jpeg

VRAL will be exploring these hybrid forms - “video game augmented theatre” - that re-imagine the very notions of “performance” and “play” using a variety of platforms, poetic language, and collective practices in the upcoming months.

Matteo Bittanti

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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