Action Half-Life

Info

Images

Special Commission

Sculptures

Concept

Info

AES+F, 2003-2005

Series of pictures, series of drawings, series of bronze sculptures (modeling by Alexey Shpakovskiy).

Images

Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Drawings

Special Commission

Horstmann Family Kids – Portraits

Sculptures

Warriors
Special Commission for Kolon (Seoul)

Concept

What is heroism in our time when war, exploits, and pathos are just part of a virtual show endlessly dissipating into mass circulation?

 

Our show is total. Starting from a well-structured 3D computer game, its powerful Hollywood effects are so wonderfully spent on saving Private Ryan, on a gala parade of Maximus' triumph in the Coliseum, and ending with specially selected TV reports from unknown and faraway places with exotic names.

 

Our heroes are teenagers emerging from the most heroic of life's phases. The teenage moment is the moment when a young shepherd can take heart and gain victory over a hulking giant and when an abandoned child can find the inner spiritual strength to extract a magic sword from a rock to become king, vanquishing all enemies. All of our young heroes are conquerors in this virtual world. Their enemy is absent, and pain and suffering are forbidden by the very nature of the game. They are so alienated that nothing, not even their common virtual battlefield, stops them from giving themselves over to pure personal exploit, to securing victory over an enemy, an enemy that does not exist. The driving concept behind this performance / construct is our perpetual attempt to precipitate the “genome of heroism” out of today's world of glimmer reality.

 

Text by AES+F edited by Craig Beaty