EVENT: CHLOÉ DESMOINEAUX (NOVEMBER 26 - DECEMBER 9 2021, ONLINE)

LIPSTRIKE

live recording of online performance

digital video (1280 x 720), sound, color, 10’, 2021 [2016], France

Created by Chloé Desmoineaux

Originally created in 2016, Lipstrike is an online performance in Counter-Strike that uses an unusual device as a weapon: a lipstick. Each time the artist applies cosmetics on her lips, her gun unleashes a torrent of bullets. She broadcast her performances on Twitch, receiving thousands of snarky comments by angry gamers, which were subsequently collected and published in a limited edition booklet. Five years later, the artist has updated the original iteration for VRAL. One question remains: has anything changed since #Gamergate?

Interested in tactical media, hacking culture, and cyberfeminism, Chloé Desmoineaux creates media experiments through performances, installations, and hijacked video games. She is particularly concerned about the place given to women as well as dissident and “minority” people in the video game industry and she tries to create spaces of visibility and reflection to discuss these issues. She is a member of the Freesson Collective which focuses on supporting creative practices and electronic music. It also organizes events and workshops on digital art and culture. Co-organizer of the Art Games Demos (2017-2019) initiative with Isabelle Arvers, Desmoineaux has curated several exhibitions about the culture, aesthetics and ideology of gaming in the past decade. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She led several workshops on alternative controllers, glitch aesthetics, interactive animations, and video games. Desmoineaux lives and works in Marseille.

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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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EVENT: VRAL #14_MARIO MU (NOVEMBER 27 - DECEMBER 10 2020)

ARCHITECTURE WITH GAMES IN THE TITLE

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18” (3x6’), 2020 (Croatia)

Created by Mario Mu, 2020

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

Architecture with Games in the Title focuses on the convergence between spatial memory and the architecture of games through the narrative framework of a dialogue. Mu compares the casualties of financial crises to video game players, forced to navigate a rigidly controlled “gamified” setting where trial-and-error is glorified as the only way to reach symbolic “achievements”. Created with Unity 3D, the scene depicts an office space replete with desks, computers, chairs, and other amenities of the modern working environment. Walls appear and disappear depending on the location of unseen characters, the “flexible workers” of the neoliberal world. This is a space without shadows, at once bright, warm, and phantasmatic. As the unseen characters engage in a conversation about architecture and memory, bots and ghosts, the environment slowly burns. 

The artistic practice of Croatian artist Mario Mu revolves around projects which are often constructed as extended gaming platforms. In addition to sound and drawing, his preferred media often include elements of game design, 3D animation, and performance. A student of Hito Steyerl, Mu received an MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin in 2017, a BFA with a major in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in 2015, and an MA from the Faculty of Graphic Arts in 2012 from the same institution. Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was an active member of the Research Center for the Proxy Politics in Berlin. He has been working on several LARP events as an author, collaborator and/or performer at Play Co London and Zagreb, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, Galerie gr_und, Acud, and UdK in Berlin. Mu is currently working on a new game project initiated by the Portuguese artist Odete and supported by Maat Museum and Boca Bienal.

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