EXPERIMENTAL PROGRAM 2
from Pierre Huyghe's Untitled (Human Mask)
RECKONING 3- Kent Lambert 2014 11min DCP
RECKONING 3 is comprised largely of imagery and sound culled from over two years of Mac and Playstation 3 video game play. Some of this play was explorational, some was performative and much was anthropological in intent. The latter category of play was conducted in online multiplayer "shooter" games, in which numerous strangers (seemingly all male) drop in and out of play and communicate via headset microphones. Though I had the ability to communicate with these strangers through my own headset microphone, I was more or less paralyzed by horror and disorientation; I remained silent and documented my eavesdropping. RECKONING 3 is an attempt toward a lucid and expansive reflection on that disorientation.
DA VINCI- Yuri Ancari 2014 25min DCP
The third part of Yuri Ancarani’s trilogy of short films, Da Vinci focuses on the eponymous specialized surgical robot whose mechanical arms perform intricate operations.-Hammer
PARALLEL II- Harun Farocki 2014 9min DCP
Parallel II explores the borders and boundaries of the game worlds. The work follows characters attempts to escape the edges of their animated world by any means, and seeks to reveal what lies outside of the defined spaces and digital borders. -VDB
UNTITLED(HUMAN MASK) Pierre Huyghe 2015 19min DCP
RECKONING 4- Kent Lambert 2016 10min World Premiere
If RECKONING 3 represented cinema looking at video games (Michael Douglas wandering a marble-columned virtual reality corridor, Siskel and Ebert playing with an early infrared motion game controller, Hollywood leading men and game avatars composited via flicker editing), RECKONING 4 presents a fantasy in which figures from cinema, video games and the “real world” listen to and gaze at (or past) each other. TVs in video game apartments show me talking and listening to Bryce, a Nightline segment on the harassment of female gamers, and the hapless, terribly acted middle-aged gamer protagonist from RECKONING 3. Game scenes are revealed to be on screens in other scenes. Conventional cross-cutting and detailed sound design create the illusion of permeability between these realms, of “life” unfolding as channels and stations are restlessly changed, of continuous ennui occasionally interrupted by menace (Kevin Spacey as politician gamer and uncanny valley villain).
RECKONING 4 reflects on toxic masculinity and the dystopia of simulation. If you walk too close to the GTAV cop, he guns you down. You can pose your MGSV character in quasi-sexual positions with other soldiers, but you must first knock them out. “I get what I what, when I want it” says the billionaire to his wife. “I need something more, but what else is there?”-K.L.