ZO
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 7’ 21”, 2017 (United Kingdom)
Created by Bob Bicknell-Knight, 2017
December 31 2020 - January 14 2020
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
An artist and an internet bot called Zo converse on the fictional social media app Kik. Their exchange is punctuated by short sequences of high-tech environments mostly devoid of human life taken from the Mass Effect video game series. The conversation, which focuses on artificial intelligence and the difference between being a robot and a human being, is reminiscent of a famous scene from the original Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner.
Bob Bicknell-Knight is is a London based artist, curator and writer, working in several mediums including installation, sculpture, video, and digital media. His work is influenced by surveillance capitalism and responds to the hyper consumerism of the internet. Utopia, dystopia, automation, surveillance and digitization of the self are some of the themes that arise through his critical examination of contemporary technologies. Recently, he’s been undergoing a number of projects, from researching how drone technology is slowly re-shaping humanity to depicting tech billionaires as trophy hunters, alongside creating a body of work concerning the multinational technology company, Amazon, and its treatment of its employees within Amazon Fulfillment Centers around the world. Bicknell-Knight is also the founder and director of isthisit?, a platform for contemporary art, exhibiting over 800 artists since its creation in May 2016. Selected solo and duo exhibitions include Eat The Rich at Galerie Polaris, FR (2021), Pickers at INDUSTRA, Brno, CZ (2021), Bit Rot at Broadway Gallery, Letchworth, United Kingdom (2020), The Big Four at Harlesden High Street, London (2019), Wellness, Ltd. at Galerie Manque, New York (2019), State of Affairs at Salon 75, Copenhagen (2019), CACOTOPIA 02 at Annka Kultys Gallery, London (2018), Sunrise Prelude at Dollspace, London (2017) and Are we there yet? at Chelsea College of Art, London (2017). Bicknell-Knight has spoken on panel discussions and given artist talks at Contemporary Calgary, Canada, Tate Modern, London, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Camberwell College of Arts, London and Goldsmiths, University of London among others.
MY OWN LANDSCAPES
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18', 2020 (France)
Created by Antoine Chapon, 2020
December 11 - December 24 2020
Introduced by Luca Miranda
Warfare is being gamified. The American army has been recruiting soldiers through video games since the early zeroes: America’s Army is, after all, the title of a popular video game. Recruits are trained with digital simulations and use game-like controllers to launch countless attack strikes via drones in remote lands: systemic murder by proxy. Even soldiers fighting on actual battlefields cannot escape the video game curse: those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are subsequently treated with digital simulations. But in My Own Landscapes, Chapon tells a different story: Cyrille creates and inhabits a virtual island, an utopian landscape where the soldier and his peers can escape reality, find illusory solace, and create a different identity: in fact, his experience is narrated by a female voice over. However, several paradoxes remain.
Antoine Chapon is a French artist and filmmaker based in Paris. He studied fine art, philosophy and social studies. In 2019, he learned literary Arabic at the Saint-Joseph University in Beirut. His work questions the relationship between fact and fiction, the role of the archive, and new technologies in documentary, and the possibility of making new forms in the age of digital reproduction. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions including Open Codes: The World as a Field of Data at the ZKM, Karlsruhe Museum. His first film My Own Landscapes (2020) won the award for best short film at the Visions du Réel Festival in Nyon, and the award for best short documentary film at the Norwegian Short Film Festival. It was also presented at the 2020 Torino Film Festival.
ARCHITECTURE WITH GAMES IN THE TITLE
Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 18' (6’ X 3), 2020 (Croatia)
Created by Mario Mu, 2020
November 26 - December 10 2020
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Architecture with Games in the Title focuses on the convergence between spatial memory and the architecture of games through the narrative framework of a dialogue. Mu compares the casualties of financial crises to video game players, forced to navigate a rigidly controlled “gamified” setting where trial-and-error is glorified as the only way to reach symbolic “achievements”. Created with Unity 3D, the scene depicts an office space replete with desks, computers, chairs, and other amenities of the modern working environment. Walls appear and disappear depending on the location of unseen characters, the “flexible workers” of the neoliberal world. This is a space without shadows, at once bright, warm, and phantasmatic. As the unseen characters engage in a conversation about architecture and memory, bots and ghosts, the environment slowly burns.
The artistic practice of Croatian artist Mario Mu revolves around projects which are often constructed as extended gaming platforms. In addition to sound and drawing, his preferred media often include elements of game design, 3D animation, and performance. A student of Hito Steyerl, Mu received an MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) in Berlin in 2017, a BFA with a major in Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in 2015, and an MA from the Faculty of Graphic Arts in 2012 from the same institution. Between 2016 and 2017, Mu was an active member of the Research Center for the Proxy Politics in Berlin. He has been working on several LARP events as an author, collaborator and/or performer at Play Co London and Zagreb, Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam, Galerie gr_und, Acud, and UdK in Berlin. Mu is currently working on a new game project initiated by the Portuguese artist Odete and supported by Maat Museum and Boca Bienal.
CHEATIMERISM
Digital video, color, sound, 14’ 55’’, 2020 (Italy)
Created by Luca Miranda
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
By reconfiguring the spaces of Grand Theft Auto V, Cheatimerism investigates the political and economic implications of consumption and its side effects, including concrete waste, virtual surrogacy, and planned obsolescence. This machinima shows various sculptural forms made of identical vehicles, the Rapid GT, a sports car, and a waste collection truck, the Trashmaster. Capitalism, the artist seems to suggest, is the ultimate cheat mode.
Luca Miranda’s practice focuses on the relationship between reality and simulation. He is especially interested in the aesthetic potential of the avatar. In his work, Miranda critically investigates game mechanics and concepts such as immersion, identification, and interpassivity. Miranda received a B.A. in Media and Art from the University of Bologna and in 2019 received a M.A. in TV, Cinema and New Media at IULM University. In 2018, he co-founded Eremo, an artistic collective based in Milan. He is currently working on book about walking simulators.
INFINITE GRAVEYARD
digital video, color, sound, 666’, 2020 (Russia)
Created by Mikhail Maksimov
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Mikhail Maksimov first encountered videogames at the age of twelve. His first time was with Clive Townsend’s Saboteur! (1985) on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Subsequently, he fell in love with first-person shooters – Doom II in particular – which he played on a personal computer installed in a dentist’s office. Later in life, Maksimov turned his fascination for gaming into an area of artistic experimentation because he felt that unlike cinema and contemporary art, video games are less reliant on curatorial arbitrariness and can reach a broader public via alternative channels, e.g. the internet, rather than a traditional museum or gallery. Infinite Graveyard is part of Maksimov’s ongoing exploration of gaming mechanics and aesthetics. Presented on VRAL as a 666 minutes gameplay video recorded by the artist, Infinite Graveyard is a commentary of the endless cycle of death in an age marked by toxic positive thinking, stultifying gamification, and neoliberal imperatives.
Mikhail Maksimov is an artist and filmmaker whose practice revolves around game engines, 3D graphics, algorithms, and neural networks. Among his most recent (and radical) projects is SAR, Sanatorium Anthropocene Retreat! (formerly known as MOMAM, Museum of Modern Art Massacre), a dystopian first-person shooter set in the artworld and inspired by the writing of Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway. After graduating in Architecture from the Moscow State Construction University and receiving an MFA from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia, Maksimov took part in several exhibitions and festivals, including the Moscow Modern Art Biennale, Venice Biennale of Architecture, New Horizons International Film Festival, the Moscow International Film Festival, Manifesta, Kansk Video Festival, the International Festival of Cinematographic Debuts “Spirit of Fire”, Locarno Festival, Hamburg KurzFilmFestival, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, and many more. Maksimov lives and works in Moscow.
