GAMESCENES

EVENT: BENJAMIN HALL (NOVEMBER 12 - NOVEMBER 25 2021, ONLINE)

CROWDSOURCING

edited recording of live a simulation

digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 6’ 08”, 2021, United Kingdom

Created by Benjamin Hall

vral.org

A live simulation created with Unity, Crowdsourcing examines the fatalistic relationship between predictability and chaos, and their conflation and obfuscation through systems of digital control. A large crowd congregates at the border of what Hall calls an “algorithmic predestination and aesthetic incoherence”. The crowd moves spasmodically: here the simulation does not reproduce the features of an ultra-detailed world, but rather its contours and contradictions.

Benjamin Hall is an artist, animator, filmmaker, game designer and writer. He received a BA Fine Art from the Glasgow School of Art, where he led DS2020 Simulator, a student project that virtually recreated his peers’ cancelled degree show as a free and accessible game-based space. Featuring the works of 136 graduates, DS2020 Simulator was discussed, among others, by BBC One, BBC Radio Scotland, the List UK and more. Benjamin’s work was featured in The Wrong Biennale (2019), Visual Arts Scotland’s Graduate Showcase (2020), HomeBrew Digital Commissions (2020), and Digital Artist Residency (2020). In September 2020, he moved to Jonava, Lithuania to transform the local public library into a virtual archival simulation. In 2021 he led the development of and participated in spur.world, an in-browser virtual multiverse featuring 14 fully explorable sub-worlds. Hall lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland.

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EVENT: EXiS 2021(SEPTEMBER 9-16 2021, SEOUL, IN-SITU & ONLINE)

EXiS 2021

The 18th Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul

September 9–16, 2021

74 World Cup-ro, Mapo Gu

Seoul, 04004, Korea (the Republic of)

Official website

This year year, the Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul is screening a terrific selection of machinima, game videos, and game-based digital video works in their EX Choice program. Among the artists featured are Antoine Chapon, Total Refusal, Larry Achiampong & David Blandy, Gina Hara, Isabelle Arvers, Peter Burr, and many more. Kudos to the curators!

press release

Since 2020, all of us are going through a period of crisis. Just like many other film festivals, EXiS faced unexpected challenges. Expanding to online territories, however, gave us countless chances to meet our new audience and these changes made us think about the future of film festivals. We know that there is no such a fine conclusion for these miscellaneous yet serious thoughts. Now we find ourselves picking up our masks to meet people and go sit in the theater alone keeping our distance. Although our daily lives are susceptible to change, we are holding the film festival once again ridden with anxiety, but with excitement as well.

This year, we are delighted to present 40 films from new and established artists in EX-Now, the main competition programs, including Shinya Isobe, Simon Liu, Luis Arnias, James Edmonds, Shun Ikezoe, Sybille Neumeyer, Wai Yin Yan, Dianna Barrie, Saeyoung Park, Junehyuck Jeon, Youngmee Roh, and many more talented artists.

EX-Choice has a different theme each year and aims to introduce trends to be noted in the future. This year's EX-Choice is curated in two directions. The first is to focus on contemporary moving images heavily based on CGI. Following a variety of concept such as games, data, algorithms, AI, counter-narratives, and post-internet, EX-Choice 1 ~ 5 sections are in fact loosely connected. The works presented in these sections take risks , challenges norm and at the same time subtly ask questions about the reality in front of us. Another direction we will take in this year’s EX-Choice is to continuously explore experimental documentaries, which has been paying attention for several years. EX-Choice 6~14 present mainly of the recent works of important artists.

The Indi-Visual section of programs invites four artists, Ellie Kyungran Heo, Mihye Cha, Salomé Lamas, and Laura Huertas Millán, and presents their essential body of works. For EX-Retro, the ongoing program dedicated to important figures in experimental film history, we have selected and screened Stan Brakhage’s films since 2014. This year, we prepared Vancouver Island Films, known as Brakhage’s latest photography series. Also, we bring Jerome Hiller’s finest works that reveal the magic of ordinary surroundings. In Asia Forum, our program considered as research on distinct features of Asia’s moving images, recent artistic moving images from Japan, including Araki Yu, Goshima Kazuhiro, and Tomotosi, will be screened.

Furthermore, we are launching a new program called EX-Live to examine the aesthetic relationship between performance and moving images. This year we will show Nigel Rolfe’s extinguished works as well as recent performance artists’ films.

All programs will be screened in theaters in Seoul and some of them will be available to stream online on the festival’s website as well.

About EXiS: Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, a.k.a EXiS, was founded in 2004 by Moving Image Forum in order to screen experimental films and contemporary moving images that explore the unknown forms and territories of cinema. We value artists’ films made with an original vision that take challenges and aesthetic adventures. We are one of the few places in Asia that still screen works of many important artists who work with celluloid film.

LINK: EXiS 2021_EX Choice

EVENT: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS (JULY 23 - AUGUST 5 2021, ONLINE)

RADICALIZATION PIPELINE

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 15’ 01”, 2021 (Greece)

excerpt from live simulation

Created by Theo Triantafyllidis

July 23 - August 5 2021

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

You may disagree about the root causes, but the diagnosis is crystal clear: reality has imploded. The symptoms are everywhere. Video game fantasies, themes, characters, and narratives – which used to be confined to the imaginary – now shape our everyday life. In a world where meme presidents plan insurrections, global corporations are actively destroying the planet, social media are a toxic cesspool, a new kind of superstition – conspiracy theories, lore, false narratives – has become the dominant epistemological currency. In this uncertain, hyper violent, and chaotic scenario – complicated by metacrises, climate catastrophe, and ongoing pandemics – artists have been among the few to clearly identify the culprits and to imagine possible alternatives. In his latest work, Radicalization Pipeline, Greek artist Theo Triantafyllidis simulates the perpetual clash of two endless hordes fighting to death with large melee weapons. A wide range of characters – from citizen militias to fantastical creatures, from street protesters to hooligans – kill each other tirelessly. There’s no resolution. There’s no closure. Just mutual destruction. This is the Game over age. We now live in the world that video games made.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Athens, Greece) is an artist who builds virtual spaces and interfaces for the human body to inhabit them. He creates expansive worlds and complex systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd and poetic ways. These are often manifested as performances, virtual and augmented reality experiences, games and interactive installations. He uses awkward interactions and precarious physics, to invite the audience to embody, engage with and challenge these other realities. Through the lens of monster theory, he investigates themes of isolation, sexuality and violence in their visceral extremities. He offers computational humor and AI improvisation as a response to the tech industry’s agenda. He tries to give back to the online and gaming communities that he considers both the inspiration and context for his work by remaining an active participant and contributor. He holds an MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts and a Diploma of Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum in LA and NRW Forum in Dusseldorf, DE and various galleries such as Meredith Rosen Gallery, the Breeder, Eduardo Secci and Transfer. He was part of Sundance New Frontier 2020, Hyper Pavilion in the 2017 Venice Biennale and the 2018 Athens Biennale: ANTI-. Theo Triantafyllidis is based in Los Angeles.

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EVENT: THEO TRIANTAFYLLIDIS, RADICALIZATION PIPELINE (JUNE 3 - SEPTEMBER 25 2021, MILAN)

Radicalization Pipeline

Theo Triantafyllidis

June 3–September 25, 2021

Eduardo Secci Milano

Via Bernardino Zenale, 3, 

Milano, 20123 Italy

 

Press release:

For this new body of works, Theo Triantafyllidis draws inspiration from video games and recent events of civil disorder in America. Looking at phenomena such as the rise of QAnon, the artist suggests connections between gamification, fantasy, and political radicalization. The gallery space brings together a series of ceramic weapons. These dark glazed stoneware works are adorned with decorative details like tennis over grip tapes, hair extensions and laser-cut acrylics. With titles such as Chadslayer, SnowflakeSkorcherand, Stormbringer, they are reminiscent of the exaggerated forms often seen in video games and extremist ideologies which the internet culture has accelerated.

The ceramic surfaces reflect the light from a large display playing Radicalization Pipeline, a Live Simulation piece that runs on a gaming PC. Two seemingly endless hordes clash into a violent free-for-all, swinging large melee weapons and shouting with distorted voices. A wide range of characters -from citizen militias to fantastical creatures -enter the screen only to kill each other, wave after wave, sinking their virtual bodies slowly into a muddy landscape. The mood occasionally lightens up by the medieval covers of familiar pop songs that complete the soundscape conceived by the composer and sound designer Diego Navarro."

Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline (excerpt), live simulation, 2021

Theo Triantafyllidis, born in Athens in 1988, lives and works in Los Angeles. The artist builds virtual spaces and interfaces for the human body to inhabit them. He creates complex worlds and systems where the virtual and the physical merge in uncanny, absurd, and poetic ways. They are performances, mixed reality experiences, games and interactive installations. He received a Master of Fine Arts at UCLA Department of Design Media Arts in 2016. Selected solo shows include ‘Pastoral’ at Eduardo Secci, Florence (2019); ‘Role Play’ at Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2018); and ‘Pretzel Twist’ at The Breeder, Athens (2017). Among the group exhibitions, ‘World on a Wire’, Hyundai Motor Studio & Rhizome of New Museum, Seoul (2021); Sundance New Frontier Exhibition, Park City, Utah (2020); Athens Biennale: ANTI-, Athens (2018); and Hyper Pavilion, 57thVenice Biennale (2017). Theo Triantafyllidis’s work is currently on display at MEDITERRANEA 19 Young Artists Biennale: School of Waters, San Marino (2021). Among his upcoming exhibitions in 2021, ‘Radical Gaming: Immersion Simulation Subversion’ at House of Electronic Arts Basel and the Augmented Reality Biennale at NRW-Forum Düsseldorf.

All images courtesy of the Artists and Eduardo Secci gallery.

Theo Triantafyllidis

Witchblade, 2021

Glazed Stoneware 31 x 5 cm 12 1/4 x 2 in

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis

LINK: Theo Triantafyllidis, Radicalization Pipeline at Eduardo Pecci Milano