Baden Pailthorpe, ThingmajigLambda print on metallic paper, face mounted on glass and aluminum, 118 cm x 83 cm, 2009
Baden Pailthorpe,Vromopsarrakas, Lambda print on metallic paper, face mounted on glass and aluminum, 118 cm x 83 cm, 2009
Baden Pailthorpe, Krawdad, Lambda print on metallic paper, face mounted on glass and aluminum, 118 cm x 83 cm, 2009
"As humans spend more time online and become increasingly invested in their on-screen personas, the space between the referent and the game becomes increasingly opaque. “A lot of people take the Internet as a neutral space but it’s not – it’s totally constructed”, Baden Pailthorpe explains. Similarly, images and programs presented online are NOT neutral; they’re ideologically charged. Consider the morality or amorality of mortality in games like Grand Theft Auto and Doom. Murder and armed robbery are fun. Players revel in lawlessness. Is this innocent, transgressive escapism that calms the neurosis of our ADSL-paced lifestyles? Or are these killer games stoking the flames of modern-day rage and bigotry? Baden Pailthorpe’s new series, Other Version 2.0 instigates questions regarding the representation of the Other in violent, militaristic online games. Informed by Edward Said’s writings on orientalism, Baden critiques modern war-making video games through post-colonial theory. We may live in a post-colonial, politically correct era – but we are not all one big happy family. Post 9/11, the Other is scarier and more scapegoated than ever. Baden’s work highlights how political propaganda continues to thrive through the insidious diffusion of clichéd racial stereotypes of the Other, these images now propagating within new volitional forms of entertainment where you too can kill the enemy. In this sense, Baden poses further questions concerning the limits and death of the real/virtual body, serving to highlight and critique the recent integration of gaming technology in current wars. Today when young people enlist, part of their training is playing Xbox-based combat simulators like Full Spectrum Warrior. The blood may not be real yet, but it is soon. Soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan actually use Xbox-like controllers to guide unmanned drones – which kill real, live people. Ironically, violent video games have traditionally been the province of teenagers and youths; young people who truly believe they’re immortal. They get you pumped on the thought of dying without actually dying. Yet in real-life combat situations, this is playing for keeps." (Wilfred Brandt)
Comments