Joseph DeLappe collaborates with ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture supported by Onassis Foundation

ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture presents Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides (2018-19) and Killbox (2015-16) by, artist and Professor of Games and Tactical Media at Abertay University in Dundee, Joseph DeLappe.

Photo: Pinelopi Gerasimou

July, 3rd – 24th | Elegy: GTA USA Gun Homicides (2018-19) & Killbox (2015-16)

Elegy, created by DeLappe working with coder Albert Elwin, offers an apocalyptic rendition of American society via a gaming modification for Grand Theft Auto V. The work is a daily reenactment of the total number of USA gun homicides since January 1st, 2018. The project launched on July 4th 2018 when there were 7,293 gun homicides in the United States and by the end of 2018 this number grew to 14,730. On January 1st 2019 the homicide count for the year began anew at 0. Data by the Gun Violence Archive were employed to update the game’s software at a daily rate.

Next to Elegy, ViZ presents Killbox, an interactive computer game that simulates the technology of drone warfare. The game, according to DeLappe, deals with the alienating abstraction of ‘killing through virtualisation’. The virtual environment is based on a documented drones strikes in Northern Waziristan, Pakistan. The work is an international collaboration between DeLappe and the Biome Collective, including artists and game developers, Malath Abbas, Tom Demajo and Albert Elwin.

Joseph DeLappe’s collaboration with ViZ inaugurates Public Hazards, a series of performances, online acts, screenings, lectures, and shows, programmed by ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture.

The show is curated by Kostis Stafylakis, Artistic Director of ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture.

Opening: Friday 3 July 2020, 19:30

Duration: 3 July – 24 July

Visiting hours: Tuesday to Friday, 17:00 – 21:00

A performance about the COVID crisis at Onassis Foundation YouTube Channel

In addition to the works presented at the space of ViZ, DeLappe offers an online workshop to the students of the Athens School of Fine Art, to analyze a lineage of projects that function at the intersections of computer gaming, art/technology, real world and online interventionist strategies engaging our geo-political contexts. The workshop culminates with a collective reaction to aspects of the Covid crisis with use of paper-crafted masks. This performance will be recorded and screened at the Onassis Foundation YouTube Channel and ViZ’s media outlets. DeLappe’s show and workshop launch the Public Hazards program by ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture. The program will investigate recent transformations of the idea of the public in the post-social media era of generalized alert, sanitary policies, and fear of contagion.

About ViZ

The ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture is a research and experimentation center on the borders of artistic production, public sphere, urban experience and contemporary art education, but also an initiative of Laboratories 11 & 12 of the Athens School of Fine Arts supported by the Onassis Foundation and the Development & Destination Management Agency of the City of Athens.

It was established as a hub for the study of visual culture phenomena in the digital and post-digital context that organizes and hosts exhibitions and lectures by international artists, experimental student exhibitions, specialized seminars and workshops, covering a wide range of topics from art activism to the mechanics of digital games.

Read more about Elegy

Elegy opens the door to a world taken over by 2nd amendment fanatics, survivalists and lone wolves. The original mechanics of the game surrender to a cinematic synthesis of slow sequence shots, using the game’s bots to prophetize the utmost civil war. The bold accuracy of data visualization –the very idea to feed a game’s software with a numerical account of real murders- challenges the fantasy oriented aesthetics of “medieval heroism” flooding today’s video games. DeLappe used Twitch.tv to screen the project, ruining the platform’s bliss. “God Bless America”, as performed by Kate Smith in 1938, serves as Elegy’s soundtrack, prompting the viewer to pause and face an inescapable recapitulation. 2018 was the 100th anniversary of the composing of this song by Irving Berlin. These days, following an outburst of police brutality legitimized by the American president, the digital cityscapes of Elegy have become, again, real survival fields.