Entering the abyss through video games
- Jonas
Video games are not real. They are a nice way to leave real life behind and unwind. Action-packed games in which your own life is threatened and you therefore have to eliminate opponents in various ways are perfect for this. What is good and evil is clearly defined here, or at least it‘s clear which side you are on.
Now, we live in a world that is constantly evolving. What was a fact for a long time may become obsolete at some point. While right now there is still a barrier between our minds and the digital world, which is bridged by user interfaces, what happens when the boundary between physical ‘reality’ and digital ‘fiction’ is eventually dissolved? Or rather, when will this point be reached?
German artist Cemile Sahin poses this question in her latest exhibition ‘ROAD RUNNER’ at Esther Schipper, Berlin, and shows a world in which the physical and digital become one. The brightly lit exhibition space is filled with popping colours, half of the floor is covered with a yellow carpet. All around the walls there are large pieces of lettering with Sahin’s work mounted above them.
At the centre of the exhibition is a short film of the same name, in which AI-controlled drones have gone out of control and established a complete state of surveillance and oppression. Protagonist Bêrîtan is pursued by them. Despite the flashy presentation, as we are used to from action comedy films, with large fonts and casual dialogue, it is clear to viewers that Bêrîtan’s situation is serious.
The application of a face cream allows her to escape surveillance and enter the digital space. In order to free her sister, who is being held captive there, she now has to overcome challenges in the world of three video games. For this challenge she has been given three lives.
In the world of Super Mario, she fights her way through a jump’n’run parkour and meets Mario himself at the end, whom she has to defeat in a one-on-one fight. She is defeated, loses a life, but still makes it to the next level. In the world of ‘Counterstrike’, perhaps the most famous first-person shooter in the world, there is shooting and grenades are thrown, here too she loses a life. Finally, she pursues a target in a pink Bentley in the world of Grand Theft Auto (GTA). After a crash, a hand-to-hand fight ensues in which she is fatally wounded with a knife. All lives are now exhausted.
The challenges are accompanied by a lurid commentator – think Squid Game or Tribute of Panem – and together with the familiar worlds of the different games, action-packed entertainment is provided. It is only when Bêrîtan’s lifeless body returns to physical reality from the final challenge that the audience realises the sad reality of the protagonist. Her little sister leans over her in disbelief and starts running the next moment, seen from the perspective of a drone.
Sahin’s video work is produced highly professional. In a mix of glossy feature film and gameplay, the danger, violence and abysses of the story appear entertaining and far removed from reality. Herein lies the strength of the work. It perfectly portrays the abstract danger of digital technologies, disguised by their entertainment factor and opaque functionality. Because one thing is certain: our lives are not only becoming more digital, the digital is also becoming more alive!
Once a place away from reality where people discussed in poorly designed forums, dived into other realities or ordered books, the digital space has now grown into a complex machine with endless, unfathomable branches to the physical world. It is easy to forget that all of this is essentially based on a binary of zeros and ones – pure rationality. How beautifully simple, you might think. Sahin seems to refer to this with the statement ‘The Language of Power is Precision’, which is displayed in huge letters on the walls of the exhibition.
Precision, that implies clear measurability and no room for error – zero or one, good or bad, everything is clearly defined. A clear definition, as desired by many people in real life as well and propagated by people like Trump or the AfD to satisfy their own thirst for power.
A differentiated examination of the reality and individual judgement have no place here, because then it would quickly becomes clear how complex the realities of our lives are. Debates arise and systems need to be constantly reflected upon. The boundaries between good and evil often become blurred and there are no easy, binary answers. None of this is beneficial to the exercise of power, which thrives on clear rules and mechanical enforcement.
The protagonist’s statement ‘A drone is a drone’ at the beginning of the film shows the perfidy of this exercise of power using modern technology. One might think one sees a parallel here to Bertolt Brecht’s comedy ‘Mann ist Mann’. In his play about the interchangeability and malleability of human identities, he tells the story of the characterless packer Galy Gay, who meets a group of soldiers by chance, joins them, changes his name and ultimately becomes an interchangeable member of an army of a hundred thousand men. Without a will of his own, he has been moulded purely by external circumstances. ‘A drone is a drone’ seems to be the technological enhancement of this. A tool for the mechanised execution of orders that asks no questions.
The resulting increasing potential for danger and manipulation is a further aspect of Sahin’s works shown here. Particularly through the continuous blurring of reality and fiction as digital technology advances.
Statements such as ‘The sharpest blade is the one you never see coming’ or ‘You move through life but it never lets you forget where you’ve been’ can be found on her printed aluminium panels. They are printed on AI-generated backgrounds with a 90s video game look and show pixelated diamonds, firearms and banknotes, among other things. However, the bright colours and digital look make them so ‘sugar-coated’ that they skillfully disguise the seriousness of the messages. In fact, the opposite is the case. You feel like you are in the world of fiction, where human abysses are expressly desired for entertainment purposes.
This ambivalence is what makes Sahin’s exhibition so strong. Video games and feature films are not reality, one might say, but here they symbolise a progressive technological development that is often very real or has real effects.
Algorithms that are difficult to understand are increasingly determining our lives. Drones, remote-operated with controllers, similar to video games, hit targets made of flesh and blood, ideals of beauty are influenced by digital filters and filter bubbles and deep fakes create new realities.
In her exhibition, Sahin makes this new dimension of our reality, this ‘digital dopamine factory’, her own. She subversively utilises its supposed advantages to draw attention to its dangers. She shows us how we enter the abyss of algorithmic control and political radicalisation with facetune filters, dancing to TikTok trends.
Cemile Sahin’s exhibition “ROAD RUNNER“ at Esther Schipper, Berlin runs until March 5th, 2025.
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