EVENT: BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR’S HEY PLASTIC GOD PLEASE DON’T SAVE THE ROBOTIC KING… (DECEMBER 8 - 21 2023, ONLINE)

Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King

single-channel digital video, color, sound 5’ 33”, 2023, Iran/Greece

Created by Babak Ahteshamipour

Hey Plastic God please don’t save the Robotic King, Let him drone in Acidic Anesthetic explores the mental disintegration of a cyber-king plagued by hallucinations fueled by narcissism, megalomania, and a relentless desire for power and grandeur who finds himself spiraling into a self-created abyss. The video juxtaposes Ahteshamipour’s real-life paintings with digital landscapes from Super Mario 64 and Super Mario 64 DS video games, thus blurring the lines between physical and digital realities. This artistic choice symbolizes the ever-growing influence of digitalization on our daily lives and challenges the separation between these two realms, and the predominant androcentric narratives in gaming culture.

Babak Ahteshamipour is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and musician based in Athens, Greece with a background in mining and materials engineering. His practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs the actual, aimed at correlating topics from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity, exploring them via gaming, online and pop subcultures with a focus on themes of coexistence and simultaneity. Ahteshamipour’’s work has been presented at festivals, venues, galleries and spaces, museums and institutes such as Centre Pompidou, New Art City, The Wrong, Neo Shibuya TV, University of North Texas, The Networked Imagination Laboratory (McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario), Biquini Wax ESP, Experimental Sound Studio, Milan Machinima Festival, [ANTI]MATERIA, ArtSect Gallery, and Ametric Festival. Ahteshamipour has released music on the independent cassette label Industrial Coast and on the cassette label Jollies. His music has been played on radio stations such as Fade Radio, Radio Raheem, and Radio alHara. He has performed and shared the stage with artists such as HELM, Zoviet France, The Nam Shub of Enki, Gaël Segalen, Sister Overdrive, and Kiriakos Spirou. He has created video clips for artists such as Fire-Toolz, Digifae, and B.MICHAEEL. His work has been featured on magazines such as CTM Festival’’s magazine, KIBLIND, VRAL (Milan Machinima Festival), und. Athens, Our Culture Magazine and ATTN: Magazine.

EVENT: BABAK AHTESHAMIPOUR (SEPTEMBER 16 - SEPTEMBER 29 2022, ONLINE)

POST-CODED THOUGHTS ON THE NEVER-UPCOMING FORESHADOWED LI(F)E

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 8’ 054”, 2021, Iran/Greece

Created by Babak Ahteshamipour

Post-coded Thoughts on the Never-upcoming Foreshadowed Li(f)e is a machinima created with The Sims. In this post-apocalyptic narrative, human beings suddenly vanish, leaving behind all their digital spawns: A.I., avatars, algorithms, and programs. Faced with their own risk of extinction, these non-human entities acquire agency and embark into an existential journey to find meaning in an otherwise empty life. The main character is Babak Ahteshamipour’s alter ego, who is reproducing the sheer banality of RL (real life) activities in an environment mirroring his “real”, concrete space, having imported some of his paintings, few custom 3D models from other video games that are depicted in the paintings, musical improvisations with electric guitar and piano, and a text visualizing the sim-avatar’s thoughts.

Babak Ahteshamipour’s practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs actual, aimed at correlating various topics that are not directly connected at first glance from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity exploring them via MMORPGs/video games, social media and online integrating themes of co-existence and simultaneity in response to the futuristic anthropocentric urge of technocracy to focus on posthumanism. He has exhibited and performed at Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), New Art City (online), The Wrong (online), Sub Rosa space (Athens, Greece), ERGO Collective (Athens, Greece), arebyte (online), Biquini Wax ESP (Mexico City, Mexico), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago, Illinois) and elsewhere. He has released music on the independent cassette label Industrial Coast and his music has been played on radio stations such as Noods Radio (Bristol, U.K.), Radio Raheem (Milan, Italy), Fade Radio (Athens, Greece) and Radio alHara. Originally from Iran, Ahteshamipour lives and works in Athens, Greece.

WATCH NOW