Game Art: Alan Butler's MONDO CANE! (2018)
Mondo Cane! (2018) is a 20 minute video essay that accompanies Sturtevant/a_m_f_skidrow_01 Finite Infinite, a short video loop portraying a non-player character (NPC) from a computer game, projected on a rotating beamer in the installation space. It was developed by Alan Butler to for the exhibition SITUATIONS/Posthuman at Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland (07.07.2018–16.09.2018)
The installation builds on Butler’s previous work, Down and Out in Los Santos. There, the artist embarked on a journey through the social landscape of the video game Grand Theft Auto V to document the lives of homeless NPCs in the virtual city of Los Santos. One of the characters he encountered is at the centrepiece of his new work: a homeless NPC that bears a striking resemblance to conceptual artist Sturtevant. The character is transformed into a hybrid, computational entity, half human-looking, yet resembling a dog running endlessly in circles. By directing our gaze to the characters that inhabit the uncanny borders of non/human, the artist challenges the viewer to rethink anthropomorphic representation and consider these digital entities and bots as autonomous creatures that do not subjugate to a human hierarchy.