THE VIRTUAL FRONTIER
digital video, color, sound, 3’, 2020, The Netherlands
Created by Sjors Rigters
vral.org
The popular video game Minecraft exemplifies the inner contradictions of the digital age. Lauded by many pundits as a highly creative form of entertainment, the so-called “digital LEGO” is a powerful vessel for neoliberal ideologies and hyper-capitalistic imperatives, with its frenzy of accumulation, extraction, circulation, production, and exploitation. An effective indoctrination tool now pervasive in thousands of US elementary schools, Minecraft is a techno-dream of endless growth, a manifesto for the perpetuation of devastating patterns of consumption, competition, and destruction. Informed by colonialist principles, its gameplay elevates numbing grinding routines into a recipe for the good life, casting the player as both a conqueror and an entrepreneur. In his video The Virtual Frontier, Dutch designer Sjors Rigters brings to the foreground the toxic message of one of the most successful video games of all time.
Sjors Rigters (b. 1995) is a graphic designer specializing in visual identity and editorial design. After receiving his BA in Graphic Design at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, he opened his own studio. Sjors lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
THE CONVENIENCE STORE
digital video, color, sound, 6’ 23”, 2018, Sweden
Created by Jonne Hansson
April 8 - April 21 2022
VRAL.org
The Convenience Store follows three recently former students who graduated from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden and later moved to the fictional city Los Santos hoping to succeed as artists. They all have encountered challenges in their respective fields. One day they accidentally meet each other in a convenience store. In a setting, reminiscent of Kevin Smith’s cult film Clerks, they have a strange, meta-referential conversation.
Jonne Hansson (b. 1983) is an artist working with digital media. He received an MFA from Umeå Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå, Sweden and a BA in Fine Arts from Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In the past decade, Jonne has created several machinima, drawings, prints and installations. His practice is narrative driven, with an emphasis on short films or using dis- or replaced still imagery. Different interests — including video games, sports, animals, and movies — are mixed with literary classics, resulting in narrative works — ranging in tone from philosophical, to poetic, to sit-com slapstick gags — pointing out the oddness, if not absurdity, of contemporary life. His work has been exhibited internationally, including Argentina, Croatia, Italy, and Sweden. His work Heavy Thoughts was presented at Milan Machinima Festival MMXXII. Jonne lives and works in Sweden.
The sixth edition of the MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL will take place in hybrid form, both online and in situ (Milan, Italy) between March 19 - 26 2023
Filmmakers and video artists engaged in the practice of appropriating, repurposing, and remixing video games are encouraged to send us their work for consideration. All submissions will be judged by an international panel of jurors comprising scholars, curators, and critics. A Critics' Award will be awarded to the most groundbreaking work.
Screenings of selected machinima will be curated around different themes and presented in different sections. The most interesting submissions are those which seek to capture or highlight a specific facet of contemporary life, from politics to art, from violence to creativity, from technology to ideology, through the aesthetic lenses of digital gaming.
The deadline for submissions is December 30, 2022
The full program will be announced in early March 2023
The MILAN MACHINIMA FESTIVAL MMXXII returns with a hybrid format —both online and in situ screenings — after a long disruption in the face of an unprecedented global crisis. The festival program is now online: 25 works of machinima and game video created by 21 artists representing 9 countries are featured in two distinct sections — EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (March 26 2022, IRL) and FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online) — for a total of 11 programs.
Below is a breakdown of all the features:
EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE (Museum of Interactive Cinema, Milan, March 26 2022): MACHINEMA (MACHINE CINEMA), BRAND NEW YOU ARE RETRO, and MADE IN ITALY
FOR EVERYTHING TO STAY THE SAME (March 21-27 2022, online): THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE AI, BAD TALES, SONG TO SONG, GAME VIDEO ESSAY, IDENTITIES/INTIMACIES, HISTORIES/HERSTORIES, NO DRAMA, PLEASE, and GAME OVER PRESENTS: THIS IS NOT A GAME.
This year we’ll be unlocking the various features gradually, like levels of a video game. The online section comprises seven back-to-back features and one special screening.
The first two — THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE AI — featuring works by Phil Rice (US) and Beatrice Carpina (IT) — and SONG TO SONG - featuring machinima by Paolo Santagostino (IT) and Lorenzo Antei (IT) are now available. Enjoy!
Kunst und Gesellschaft im Dialog I-III
Digital video, color, sound, 13’ 51”, 2009, Canada/Germany
Created by Sebastian Blank, 2009
March 4 - 17 2022
Introduced by Matteo Bittanti
Sebastian Blank was born in 1977 in Saskatoon, Canada. He studied audiovisual media at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal. His practice explores, among other things, the inner workings of the art world. He now lives and works in Cologne.
Kunst und Gesellschaft im Dialog I-III is a trilogy of machinima, a form of video art created by appropriating, manipulating, and repurposing video game visuals. In this case, the artist modified the popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2009) by introducing themes and elements completely alien to the original game. Specifically, the trilogy focuses on the relationship between society and the artworld, using game spaces as a performative context for the artist.
