gender

MMF MMXXIV: GINA HARA

The Milan Machinima Festival is excited to unveil Gina Hara’s latest project Machinima Bodies Space Rhythm, as part of our Game Video Essay program. We warmly invite you to an exclusive screening event on March 14, 2024, hosted at IULM University. This presents a rare chance to experience Hara’s groundbreaking work firsthand, with the added privilege of an introduction by the artist herself.

Gina Hara’s Machinima Bodies Space Rhythm is a pioneering episodic series that delves into the realm of machinima filmmaking from the perspectives of women and non-binary creators. This project aims to showcase their distinct voices within the machinima sphere. Situated at the intersection of video games, cinema, and digital art, the series illuminates machinima’s unique, hybrid nature. Hara not only highlights machinima’s artistic potential but also prompts reflection on digital identities and the medium’s role in contemporary art. World premiere.

Gina Hara is a Hungarian-Canadian filmmaker and artist. She holds an MA in Intermedia, an MFA in Film Production and worked with film, video, new media, gaming, and design. Waning (2011), her first fiction film, was nominated for a Best Canadian Short award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Your Place or Minecraft (2016), a machinima web series focusing on game studies, is currently available on YouTube. Hara’s full length documentary Geek Girls (2017) explores the notion of subculture from women’s perspective and was screened internationally, including IULM University in 2018 during the Gender Play conference. Her artworks have been exhibited by several institutions including the New Museum in New York, the Budapest Kunsthalle and the City of Montreal.

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MMF MMXXIV: CARSON LYNN

We are thrilled to showcase Carson Lynn’s new, daring work, A bronze anvil falls to the earth. at the forthcoming Milan Machinima Festival.

A bronze anvil falls to the earth. transports the viewer into a chthonic realm, merging gameplay with performance art in the form of machinima. “Chthonic” references the underworld and its associated deities, suggesting themes of depth and concealed forces. This piece artfully combines elements of Greek mythology, Bloodborne’s intricate gameplay, and the concept of queer rage to weave a compelling story of struggle and resilience. It features a solitary avatar in fierce combat with monstrous creatures, metaphorically representing the LGBTQ+ community’s very real-world battles against anti-queer and anti-trans sentiment. The intense combat scenes not only captivate but also explore themes of resistance and defiance against oppression, portraying the avatar’s fight as a broader metaphor for the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Lynn effectively conveys a narrative of defiance and unity in the face of changing societal challenges, emphasizing the significance of perseverance and the quest for acceptance

Carson Lynn uses digital landscapes and game spaces to challenge traditional photographic and gaming conventions. Lynn’s diverse artistic toolkit includes analog photography, machinima, infrared scanning, and game hacking. After receiving his MFA from ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena in 2020 and earning the ArtCenter Graduate Fellowship, the artist produced Dear Eidolon (2021), showcased on VRAL in 2021 and at The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, in 2023 , His work has gained international recognition, with exhibits at the Hua Naio Animation Festival (China, 2020), Barcú Expo (Bogotá, 2020), and Game Junction at Khodynka Gallery (Moscow, 2021).  Featured in interviews by Killscreen and LACMA Unframed, and a contributor to Heterotopias Magazine, Lynn’s influence extends beyond visual art. Based in Camarillo, California, Lynn continues to explore and redefine the boundaries of digital art and identity.

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EVENT: ZUZA BANASIŃSKA (AUGUST 19 - SEPTEMBER 1 2022, ONLINE)

ROAD OF FEELINGS

digital video (1920x1080), color, sound, 8’18”, 2022, Poland

Created by Zuza Banasińska

A teenage girl’s room. When she ingests a handful of pills, it start to grow. Normally, as she works out, 1,2,3... 1,2,3... 1,2,3... her muscles can carry stones. Now, they are literally carried. The room walks with her as she touches the ground. In the rhythm of the workout, the walls open up and start chewing the world. Road of Feelings is a video animation created with the Unity 3D engine as part of the artistic collective Ellen Muscle’s LARP (Live Action Role Playing). The scenario was based on a queer-feminist narrative, set in a world where extreme muscle growth is encouraged, especially for teenage girls. Every girl has to take pills that enhance body musculature. Some teens begin to overdose, shortly discovering that the phenomenon enables them to produce hybridized connections. Those hybridizations happen through the muscles themselves. Teens start building and experiencing global networks between things and beings.

Zuza Banasińska (b. 1994) is an audio-visual artist making video-based environments. In her works, virtual and real elements are hybridized beyond distinction in an effort to move from representation towards affective mapping. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow, Universität der Künste in Berlin, and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2020, she won first prize in the Polish Experimental section at Short Waves in Poznań and On. Art in Wrocław. Her works have been shown at the U-Jazdowski CCA in Warsaw, Dům Umění Mesta Brna in Czech Republic and Blindside in Melbourne. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

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EVENT: VRAL #32_JAMIE JANKOVIĆ, DEBORAH FINDLATER (OCTOBER 15 - 28 2021)

OUTSOURCING (MY DESIRES TO AVATARS)

digital video, color, sound, 3’ 58”, 2021, United Kingdom

Created by Jamie Janković and Deborah Findlater

Outsourcing (My Desires to Avatars) is a machinima and experimental video created by video artist Jamie Janković and writer, poet and director Deborah Findlater. The work is part of an ongoing project addressing the intersectionality of responses to female characters in video games; formally speaking, the work is presented as an audio-visual poem, accompanied by voice over. According to Janković, this work is meant as a response to found footage material of the character Christie from the popular fighting game series Dead or Alive (1996– ongoing). Moreover, the examination of the role of female characters in Outsourcing (My Desires to Avatars) is part of a larger project titled The identity quest series, in which the artist addresses a multiplicity of responses to female video game characters, following engagement in interviews with queer people within the gaming industry and exploring their own views on gender in game design.

Jamie Janković is a London-based filmmaker and video artist whose practice focuses on the dynamics of gender within video game worlds: in previous works, Janković has investigated the ways in which men are socially conditioned to their cultural model by visual media and explored through found footage technique how mainstream U.S. horror and sci-fi genres police masculinity through narrative and representation.

Deborah Findlater is a writer, poet, filmmaker and DJ from South London. As director, Findlater works with montage, installation and found footage in order to dissect the construction of narrative; as writer; as writer and DJ focuses on poetic qualities through its rhythmic use of voice, words and sound. Findlater artistic practice focuses on issues related to the working class, Blackness in Britain and Black Womxnhood.

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