By Feng Mengbo (CND)

Ah_Q, which won the Award of Distinction Interactive Art, is an adaptation of Quake III, a game engine in which you have to kill or be killed by your ennemies.

In this version, the artist has replaced all the foes by himself as a war correspondent, armed with a video camera and a plasma rifle.

Players play with their feet on a dance-board (thus no keyboard nor joystick.)

The work bears also a strong autobiographical component as Feng is of the post-Cultural Revolution generation who came of age during the 1989 “incident” on Tiananmen Square. It reflects and critiques the Feng’s childhood aspiration to become a military painter as well as the collective trauma of certain historical moments of China’s recent past.
It also questions our fascination with violence and the darker side of human nature.

More pictures.