EVENT: LETTA SHTOHRYN (JULY 8 - JULY 21 2022, ONLINE)

CRYPTOHEAVEN3

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 5’ 39”, 2022, Ukraine

Created by Letta Shtohryn

Cryptoheaven3 (2022) is the third iteration of an ongoing project developed with The Sims 4 about the digital afterlife of Gerald Cotten, the CEO of QuadrigaCX, a popular cryptocurrency exchange. When Cotten unexpectedly passed away in 2018, he held the passwords to every customer's digital wallet, thereby rendering $190 million lost or missing. His mysterious disappearance sparked several conspiracy theories and marked the beginning of an online hunt for “the Truth”. Letta Shtohryn began exploring this event shortly after Cotten’s passing with Crypto H(e)aven (2019) and Cryptoheaven 2.0 (2020, in collaboration with curator Kat Zavada). The latest installment, Cryptoheaven3, is a hybrid of machinima and net.art combining The Sims 4, text messages, forum posts, and GIFs. Cotten is on a remote island enjoying the good life — sunbathing, getting daily massages, and imbibing exotic cocktails — while former QuadrigaCX users and conspiracy theorists speculate about his untimely demise.

Letta Shtohryn (Ukraine/EU) is an artist and researcher who works predominantly with media art, sculpture and imagery. She investigates the complex relationship between the physical and digital realm. She explores embodiment through a post-humanist lens, considering non-human life forms, machines, avatars, aliens, monsters, and ghosts. Being fascinated by deception, Letta also explores the relationship between fact and myth-making. Her methodical frameworks include speculative investigations, world building, and storytelling. Her tools feature virtual reality, augmented reality, textile, sculpture, video, machinima, and imagery. Her academic background is in Philosophy/Sociology (University of Vienna), Photography (Kunstschule Wien), and Digital Art (MFA/UM). Letta is the founder of digital platform Whatdowedonow.xyz and holds the position of Research Excellence Award Fellow at The Immersion Lab, University of Malta. Her work has been shown internationally.

WATCH NOW

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: