EVENT: ADONIS ARCHONTIDES (APRIL 26 - MAY 9 2024, ONLINE)

The Death Trilogy

performance documentation, digital video and audio recorded in The Sims 4, 33’ 05”, 2024, Cyprus

Created by Adonis Archontides

Za woka genava (I think you are hot), Ya gotta wob’ere! Ya gotta wob’ere! (Don’t give up! Keep trying!) and Za woka genava (I think you are hot) form a trilogy in which Archontides delves into the use of video games as a platform for documenting dual performances, those of himself and his avatar, Adonis (Sim), created within the popular simulation game, The Sims 4. This unique collaboration highlights a peculiar interdependence: although Archontides controls the outcomes of their joint endeavors, both entities contribute essential roles to their creative process. These performances unfold under the passive gaze of an audience, drawn into a somewhat sadistic voyeurism. Yet, crucially, Adonis (Sim) remains unaware of his reality as a digital construct, performing actions dictated by Archontides that, while impossible in the real world, are completely feasible within the game’s algorithmic constraints. The Death Trilogy pushes the boundaries of digital life and death, as evidenced in the final moments of each piece. Here, viewers witness Adonis’s resurrection, a thematic echo of the limitless possibilities afforded by simulated environments.

Adonis Archontides is a multidisciplinary artist who studied Illustration & Visual Media at the University of the Arts in London. His works are satirical and introspective; they often investigate the production of identity as a conscious or subconscious process, and the porosity between fiction, reality, and simulation. Part of his research focusing on his namesake Adonis, an ancient Greek nature deity, revolves around the effects of time on the interpretation of myths. An avid gamer, Archontides believes in the artistic potential of video games which often uses as raw material in his artistic practice. He has been collaborating with an avatar of himself created in the popular simulation game The Sims 4, juxtaposing Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey with an artist’s career trajectory through an episodic narrative. Archontides lives and works in Limassol, Cyprus.

EVENT: ALEKSANDAR RADAN (NOVEMBER 24 - DECEMBER 7 2023, ONLINE)

This water gives back no Images

3-channel video installation, 6:12 min, loop, 2017, Germany; hereby presented as a single-channel digital video

Created by Aleksandar Radan

Originally conceived as a 3-channel video installation, This water gives back no Images features a lush, tropical digital landscape created using modified scenes from Grand Theft Auto. We see palm trees bending in the wind and hear soft rustling sounds and bird chirps. An avatar moves through this landscape, wading into the water. As it bathes, the figure seems to dissolve into the ripples and reflections in the water, its contours blurring into the surroundings. About halfway through the video, a grainy black and white recording of Nina Simone singing “Images” (1966) appears embedded within the video game aesthetic. This water gives back no Images questions notions of identity and reflection within an increasingly digital world. 

A German artist born in 1988, Aleksandar Radan studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach. His work explores digital media, focusing on themes of technological disconnection and virtual identities. Radan alters computer game environments through modding, filming live action footage within the modified spaces. His experimental short films juxtapose programmed avatars with improvised gestures, bringing the virtual and physical worlds into collision. Radan’s works have been exhibited internationally, including at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.

EVENT: BENJAMIN FREEDMAN (APRIL 21 - MAY 3 2023, ONLINE)

Benjamin Freedman

Jake

digital video, one channel, color, sound, 6’ 46”, 2023, Canada

Jake is an experimental film that explores simulated environments and the inherent artificiality and fallibility of memory. Composed of footage captured in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, a videogame set in a post-apocalyptic small town, the film presents semi photorealistic views that alternate between natural and domestic environments. Despite an effort towards realism, the footage remains uncanny as a disembodied voiceover of a young man plays overtop. Expressed in first person, the young man reminisces on his childhood memories that involve his family, the town itself and in particular, his first love named Jake. Written using OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology and recounted by a human actor, the narration eventually acknowledges that in spite of the town being simulated, like the nature of his memories of Jake, there is truth to the liminal space that divides reality and fiction. 

Benjamin Freedman’s artistic practice spans multiple mediums, encompassing sculpture, video, photography and computer generated imagery with a marked interest in complex histories and the restorative potential of photographic research. Through his lens-based work, Freedman artfully reinterprets and disrupts the past, navigating the relative truths and deceptions inherent in the medium. Of particular note is his embrace of science fiction and horror visual vocabularies to expand his documentary projects, compellingly challenging the boundaries of the genre. Notably, Freedman self-published his first photography book in 2015, and has since exhibited extensively throughout the Greater Toronto area, including at Pumice Raft Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery, Ryerson Image Centre, 8eleven Gallery, Art Gallery of Mississauga, and Division Gallery, as well as internationally at the prestigious Aperture Foundation in New York City. Beyond his individual artistic pursuits, Freedman has also made significant contributions to the Toronto arts community, serving on steering committees for the Toronto Art Book Fair and SNAP! Live Auction, and as an artist advisory committee member for The Patch Project. He is currently pursuing a Master of Design, Photography at the École cantonal d’art Lausanne (ECAL) in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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EVENT: ALIX DESAUBLIAUX (OCTOBER 28 - NOVEMBER 10 2022, ONLINE)

L’AUTRE MONSTRE (THE OTHER MONSTER)

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 48’ 26”, 2021, France (in French with English subtitles)

Created by Alix Desaubliaux

October 28 - November 10 2022

vral.org

 

L’Autre Monster (The Other Monster) is an experimental film created with/in Monster Hunter World (Capcom, 2018). A contemplative immersion in a fantasy universe, this machinima examines the affective nature of playing. The artist appropriated a popular Japanese RPG and hunting game to explore ecological issues related to the ongoing capitalist exploitation of nature, which are intimately linked to the affective positions of the players. This singular relationship is punctuated by questions about the ontology of the creatures that inhabit the world, their language and communication style, and the system of representation that informs their appearance and behavior. Part documentary, part visual poem, and part conceptual walk-through, The Other Monster was produced using in-game assets, environments, and 3D images generated by an application. From the Anjanath to the Deviljho and the Pukei-Pukei, from the director’s point of view to the players’ experiences with Serid and Unbot, accompanied by their palicos, the monster becomes a metaphor for Otherness: a tool to question one’s relationship to the Other and to the world as a whole.

French artist Alix Desaubliaux and has been an active member of the Vivarium workshop since January 2021. In addition to her artistic practice, she explores performative and experimental formats via online encounters with the collective 3G, featuring Annie Abrahams, Pascale Barret, and Alice Lenay. She is also involved with the research group WMAN, comprising six artists and curators working with video games. Desaubliaux teaches in several art schools including ENSAD Nancy, ESACM Clermont-Ferrand, ENSBA Lyon, ESAM Caen, ESBAN Nîmes, where she organizes workshops, interventions, conferences, and seminars. Her work has been presented in several exhibitions, events, and festivals including Jeune Création Fair in 2015 at the Thaddaeus Ropac gallery; Digital Arts Biennial at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Domaine Pommery; Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria; Mécènes du Sud Montpellier-Sète and Glassbox, among others. Desaubliaux lives and works in Rennes

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EVENT: CHRISTIAN WRIGHT (OCTOBER 14-27 2022, ONLINE)

SON

digital video/machinima (1920 x 1080), colour, sound, 14’ 59”, 2016, United Kingdom

Created by Christian Wright

October 14 - 27 2022

Introduced by Matteo Bittanti

vral.org

 

Christian Wright reframes painting and cinema through the medium of the video game. Inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes and by the extended duration of slow cinema, the artist references historical events and religious themes, but also fictional narratives, sagas and myths of the near future, introducing an expanded narrative that defies easy categorizations. Part of a trilogy, Son investigates the spiritual through the technical, using the notion of ritual as a point of departure. By emphasizing the in-between, the interstitial, and the liminal, the work transforms inactivity into revelation, emptiness into wholeness.

Christian Wright (b. 1993, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a digital media artist working with video games and animated assets to blend cinematic and machinima visual languages. Through this frame, he looks at how the boundaries of normal play are stretched by the performative actions of players themselves. Whether it be the intimate physical interactions of online multiplayer, the choreographed quest for perfection of speedrunning, or the mimetic act of digital cosplay within character creators, Christian places community driven gestures at the forefront.

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