Game Art: Tom Richardson's "Enduring Freedom" (2015)

"Enduring Freedom is a discomix tableau that utilizes the form of a FPS computer game, a consumer media object with naïve political objectives. The ensemble of sculptures and video embody strategies of staging and machinima animation in order to make satire of serious global politics. The fragmented desert stands as a surrealist motif where time bleeds into itself. Against this landscape, an unmanned bicycle that fails to take flight prefaces the flailing chorus of UN soldiers. Glitching and stuttering mechanically, their attempt to synchronize to the disco tracks inquires into the perennial deployment of military conquests in the Middle East. The sculptural arrangement draws parallel to the structures of film sets, framing our highly mediated access to information regarding military operations. The sculptures reference a tangible experience of the dematerialized world of video while the process of animation exposes the inherent logic of tactility and construction, existing both within the realms of the virtual and the real." (Tommy Chain)

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