cyberpunk

EVENT: STEFFEN KÖHN (MAY 10 - 23 2024, ONLINE)

Platform

digital video (1920 x 1080, Arri Alexa), color, sound, 16’ 20”, color, sound, 2021, Germany.

Created by Steffen Köhn

Platform draws from documentary interviews with freelancers on online delivery platforms, weaving their real-life experiences with elements from Neal Stephenson’s seminal 1992 cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash, which has gained iconic status in Silicon Valley. The film examines how the dystopian capitalist visions depicted in the novel mirror current capitalist dynamics. The narrative seamlessly blends the true stories of the research participants with fictional scenarios inspired by Snow Crash, creating a cyclical storyline that blurs the lines between documentary and fantasy. This technique plunges viewers into the complexities and paradoxes of modern work environments. Departing from traditional documentary styles, the film stages the drivers’ stories within a sci-fi framework, portraying their daily work struggles, prerogatives, and aspirations. Platform utilizes machinima to juxtapose live-action footage with video game based animations. This stylistic choice not only highlights the fading distinction between work and leisure but also prompts a deeper reflection on immaterial labor and value creation in today’s digital economy.

Steffen Köhn is a filmmaker, video artist, and assistant professor of multimodal anthropology at Aarhus University. He utilizes ethnography to delve into contemporary socio-technical landscapes. Köhn is the author of Mediating Mobility. Visual Anthropology in the Age of Migration (Wallflower Press, 2016). In his video and installation works, Köhn collaborates locally with gig workers, software developers, and science fiction writers to probe alternative models of technological access and power distribution. His works have been exhibited at prestigious venues including the Warsaw Biennial, Academy of the Arts Berlin, Kunsthaus Graz, Vienna Art Week, Hong Gah Museum Taipei, Lulea Biennial, The Photographers’ Gallery, and the ethnographic museums of Copenhagen and Dresden. Additionally, his films have been featured at major international festivals such as the Berlinale, Rotterdam International Film Festival, and the World Film Festival Montreal.

THE MAKING OF A CYBERPUNK MASTERPIECE: CHAIN-LINK

A standout feature of the Slot Machinima program at MMF MMXXIV was the European debut of Steven Cottingham’s As Far as the Drone Can See. This remarkable 15-minute work delves into the intricate landscape of depicting warfare, offering a critical view on the surge of imagery from modern conflict zones. Cottingham introduces a female journalist within the military simulation software ArmA 3, challenging prevailing gender biases and probing the capacity of digital simulations to capture the nuanced realities of conflict. To fully appreciate his new work, it is useful to return toChain-Link, Cottingham’s remarkable full-length machinima, showcased on the VRAL platform in 2022.

The inception of Chain-Link can be traced back to the artist’s fascination with the creative possibilities inherent in the medium of machinima. As he explained in this interview, he views the genre as a blend of found footage and digital puppetry, where the constraints of the video game’s mechanics necessitate creative and often counterintuitive workarounds, imbuing the process with a unique form of ingenuity. This engagement with the medium allows for a reworking of game worlds into narratives that diverge significantly from their original contexts. Cottingham draws upon a wide array of influences, from the choreographic to the cinematic, to repurpose the virtual landscapes of video games into a canvas for storytelling.

At the heart of Chain-Link lies the tension between creativity and constraint, a theme that resonates both within the film’s narrative and its production process. The characters navigate a world where surveillance and control pervade every aspect of existence, mirroring the constraints Cottingham himself navigated in creating the film. This theme is not just a narrative device but also a reflection on the process of machinima, where the limitations imposed by the game engine and the available mods and add-ons prompt a constant negotiation with the material at hand…

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Matteo Bittanti

Works cited

Steven Cottingham

Chain-link, single-channel HD video, comprising machinima, 3D animation, and found footage with sound, 90’ 1”, 2022, Canada

Steven Cottingham

As Far As The Drone Can See, single channel HD Video, comprising machinima, 3D animation, and found footage with sound, 15’ 50”, 2023, Canada

Steven Cottingham, Liljana Mead Martin

MACHINE CINEMA, The making of Chain-Link, digital video, color, sound, 12’ 03”, 2023, Canada

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ARTICLE: A CLOSER LOOK AT STEVEN COTTINGHAM'S CHAIN-LINK

The Warden, still from Steven Cottingham’s Chain-link, 2022.

THE MOST PRESSING QUESTION ON EVERYBODY’S MIND IS: WHAT IS CHAIN-LINK, EXACTLY? ALSO: HOW IS THIS THING EVEN POSSIBLE?

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Here are seven possible answers (warning: spoilers ahead).

First, Steven Cottingham’s monumental machinima is a penetrating commentary on carceral capitalism, after the title of a seminal collection of essays by Jackie Wang for Semiotext(e)'s Intervention series about the ideology and practice of incarceration in America, including - but not limited to - predatory policing, the political economy of fees and fines, cybernetic governance, and algorithmic policing. On a narrative level, these themes are introduced through the converging stories of Genysys 3 Copy 2 aka "Copy" - a cloned human with the ability to hack & hijack corporate drones - and Matisse, a black hacker who (allegedly) forges cryptoart tokens.

The two meet in prison and, after some initial distrust, become (more than) friends and partners-in-crime. They share more than their cell. We also meet the mysterious The Warden - a White woman in suit-and-heels whose priorities seem to go beyond the simple management of the prison - and her subordinate, The Counselor, a black officer who somehow naively believes in the “correctional” purpose of the facility she supervises. Most of the action takes place within the walls of New Jericho’s maximum security prison. However, we soon understand that, in Cottingham's world, there is no real difference between the inside and the outside: Matisse argues that everyone is being surveilled. At all time. Thus, being imprisoned and being free is just a matter of semantics: the "algos" make sure that everything runs “smooth” and don't cause any trouble. In other words, control is omnipresent, predictive, and repressive: the police actively suppress any social gatherings by showing up en masse in what remains public spaces even before people start to gather. And when the protesters do eventually show up as predicted by the machinic pre-cogs, their game is over.

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Matteo Bittanti

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NEWS: ANDROIDS DREAM AT MMF MMXXII

We are excited to announce that Androids Dream will be screened on March 26 2022 at the Interactive Museum of Cinema in Milan as part of MMF MMXXII.

The Milan Machinima Festival is delighted to present the world premiere of David Blandy’s latest video work.

In Androids Dream, the artist deconstructs the cyberpunk aesthetic, an aesthetic defined by such now canonical works such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer and Riley Scott’s Blade Runner. Androids Dream is made of layers of multiple simulacra, from the Unreal Engine assets that look like a cyberpunk video game, to the appropriation of Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher, itself a replay of Blade Runner in videogame form, through to the voiceover spoken by an algorithmic mimesis of Blandy’s own voice, a deepfake. The film breaks down the form, and in turn breaks down, repeating, refracting, and going into reverse.

David Blandy’s practice consists of in-depth investigations into the pop cultural forces that he experienced throughout his life, from hip hop and soul, to computer games and manga. His works slip between performance and video, reality and construct, using references sampled from the wide, disparate sources that construct and constantly reassemble his sense of self. David Blandy’s films are distributed through LUX. The artist is represented by Seventeen Gallery in London. Blandy’s work has been shown at numerous public institutions including Tate, London, UK; FACT, Liverpool, UK; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK; INIVA, London, UK; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Spike Island, Bristol, UK; Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK; Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, Monaco; Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Serpentine Gallery, London, UK; Witte de With, Rotterdam, Netherlands; Modern Art Oxford, UK; Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK and Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea, UK. Blandy lives and works in London.

Get your ticket here while they last → http://bitly.com/MMFMMXXII

Watch an excerpt below