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Essay: Domenico Quaranta on Eddo Stern

Matteo

Matteo

— 1 min read
Eddo Stern, Fort Paladin, 2003"Machinima is just a medium, neutral as any other medium. Yet, as any other “remix” practice, it has an enormous potential that emerges when the existing material is used to convey a meaning that conflicts with its own source. The video becomes a kind of prosthetic narrative, which extends the game’s narrative in an unpredictable direction. And that, sometimes, rejects the body it was designed for. From cut-up theory to culture jamming to Nicholas Bourriaud’s “postproduction” model, many great theorists have discussed this potential: what is interesting to me is that, when it comes to games, your appropriation is not only dealing with “existing cultural material”, or with a medium, but with your own life, the life you lived inside the game. In other words, making Sheik Attack is different from, let’s say, shooting October or a masterpiece of plagiarism such as Negativland’s Gimme the Mermaid (2002). The main difference is that Eddo Stern is, in the same time, the soldier who shot the helpless sheik’s wife and the documentarian who reports the crime." (Domenico Quaranta)Read more

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