Joseph DeLappe / Public Hazards #1

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. 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.

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.

Elegy opens the door to a world taken over by 2nd amendment fanatics, survivalists and lone wolfs. 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.

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.

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.

Opening: Friday 3 July 2020, 19:30
Duration: 3 July – 24 July
Visiting hours: Tuesday to Friday, 17:00 – 21:00

ViZ Laboratory for Visual Culture is an initiative of Athens School of Fine Art’s Labs 11 & 12, powered by Onassis Foundation and the City of Athens Development and Destination Management Agency.