Just back from LOOP video art festival and fair in Barcelona. The event is for video art lovers only. So what was a video art sceptic like me doing there? Well, i was busy becoming a convert. I’ll come back with the why and how in a lengthier post. In the meantime, here’s an example of an artwork i discovered (and unsurprisingly liked) at LOOP.
The fair had invited dozens of galleries from all over the world but only a few of them were brave enough to stray from the strictest limits of what video art is or should be. One of them is Virgil de Voldere Gallery (New York) who brought Brody Condon‘s video game modifications to Barcelona.
DefaultProperties(); , 2006. Self-Playing Computer Game, Custom Computer
Two of the pieces shown by the gallery belong to a series of re-interpretations of Late Medieval Northern European religious paintings as games that play themselves, just like Condon did with some of his previous works. Most notably my absolute favourite Karma Physics.
Brody modified a first person shooter game and exchanged the violent animations with dreamy, otherworldly and elegant scenes. The characters in his artworks seem to be suspended, they are waiting for the player to tell them what to do. Except that there is no way any player can take control of them. There’s just a computer and the screening of the scene. No joystick enables visitors to free the characters’ gestures from their limbo.
DefaultPropeties(); is a free interpretation of the baptism scene from the Triptych of Jean des Trompes by Gerard David from 1505. This “self-playing” game depicts a man with a horrible skin disease apparently lost in prayer in a Northern European medieval landscape. Right behind him is a man with a flaming sword in his right hand. One doesn’t know the intention of the man with a weapon: is he going to harm the other man or perform some sort of knighting? Meanwhile the sky is filling with a swirling extra-dimensional portal from which is emerging a astral being of unknown but seemingly royal nature.
Resurrection (after Bouts), 2007. Self-Playing Computer Game, Custom Computer
Four nude figures inhabit the second “self-playing” game, Resurrection (after Bouts). A man in the back with red tights and a head of animated hard edged abstraction seems to have a really bad trip, he reels from side to side in a trance; an eerily pale angel slowly performs a yoga tree pose over and over again while two other men idle sit quietly by the fire. Once again the surrounding light has the typical luminosity of medieval paintings. This time, the sun hovers between sunset and sunrise. Resurrection (after Bouts) is inspired by the Resurrection scene by Dirk Bouts from 1455. All the figures from the original paintings are clearly recognizable. Only Christ is represented as the campfire.
Don’t miss this 7 part video of Brody Condon’s talk at The Influencers. There’s also a recent PDF catalog, Brody Condon – Known Planes of Existence, available for download.