PERSONAL CINEMA
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PERSONAL CINEMA
The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game is a multinational project which includes the participation of a large number of artists (more than 40) working with new media to express their reaction to past and current religious, social and political conflicts that persist in the area. It will be an exhibition, a web site, a video game, a catalogue, a CD Rom ... The goals of this project are: -to show the sensitivities of artists belonging to different cultural, religious and historical backgrounds, mostly from the south eastern region of Europe, who through their time and within history have found the inspiration for their work and experience over the will to communicate their thoughts, in order to understand the existing differences … -to promote a virtual, international discussion between artist/audience, artist/critic and between the artists themselves, creating an important art net in the region … -to explore the field of new media art and new technology tools … The idea of project came from discussions within the Personal Cinema artistic group concerning the (virtual) reality presented through official narratives and industrial entertainment, about war games and epic strategy video games, about the primacy of an American Californian industry in the production and control of this specific market, which engages millions of people, worldwide. In a frenzied search for the creation of local heroes and imagined zones of conflict, the creators of these hyper-realistic virtual games, often present a simplified interpretation of human history and culture. As a consequence this form of virtual reality does not adequately describe the experience of the people who are caught within the actual war games, and by entering homes all over the world threatens the character of national identity and any kind of democratic principles and rights to free opinion. In the live real-time/real-war videos of global news broadcasters and in video games, this simplification of culture and history is itself a form of violence. The project uses the formal characteristics of the epic adventure video game to critique the real historical game that transpires on the plane of geopolitics and everyday life. The idea is to create a game like platform based on real time historical facts in which the chosen storyboard territory is the Balkan Peninsula. Participating artists are called to provide alternate representations of Balkan history and identity, to depict the reality of the Balkan Wars from an Eurasian perspective. We aim to put these strong messages into a continuous and constructive dialogue creating different virtual and real levels of conflict. The project addresses itself to the specific knowledge, abilities, resources, and creative practices of the participating artists, in order to re-imagine a future in which the people of the Balkans are something more than victims of history. It is not to be only a video game but a virtual event and a real event, virtual in the form of an internet site, which will host to extracts of selected works offering a virtual exhibition preview during the entire period of the project, and a real event, in the form of exhibitions hosted at different spaces in different countries and supported by local institutions during the period from Autumn 2003 through 2004. In the era of preventive wars, The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game is intended as a first preventive "art war", in which the character of the game offers the opportunity for serious inquiry into the matter of preventive strategy, development of the dialogue and tolerance between the peoples in the Balkans and as a base for future regional collaboration. Personal Cinema |