Joan Leandre: LONELY RECORD SESSIONS, In the Name of Kernel! Series
Title:
- LONELY RECORD SESSIONS, In the Name of Kernel! Series
Artist(s) and People Involved:
Exhibiting Artist(s):
Symposium:
Venue(s):
Creation Year:
- 2008
Art Event Overview:
I have been recording landscapes from computer war games. I used cheats to kill all moveables so there was no one around. The result is a collection of empty, digital, frozen moments of beauty:
It was a very bright high-resolution day with a peaceful slow sunshine down in the valley. A pressure in the air, dense soft seconds into hours of waiting invisible standing… One could imagine a world of silence where nothing really happens as time spins around the shaders and frames. It is the Day of the Tentacle when one has managed to sit down and contemplate the silent remains of nature itself. Those short journeys in search of that centre. Those experiences without words eventually led by a sharp and pure instinct.
This is the file left by Wojtek Kubasik at the site of impact close to ‘Le Château des Pyrénées’ long before the Great Erasing Day: ‘machine quickly seizes the area, prompting me to dispatch an elite team of Special Forces Operatives on a fake rescue mission.’ I say no! During the Shredding, the true nature of the artefact quickly emerges, pointing to the existence of several disturbing corporate entities on Earth, and ultimately the trigger for a massive-scale bewildering operation. The battle to save Earth begins as a flash freezes the tropics into a ghostly-white frozen landscape, a nameless land… the area in which the disasters have turned into a barren wilderness, filled with artefact-hunting characters and vicious mutants. As you wander the land in search of items and people on your objectives list you’ll find out you are absolutely alone. ‘Silent is around like a company that whispers low and calm. You can listen to your own heartbeat, you breathe deep, you wish then there was someone there or at least some far very low rumour which would warm you enough.’ It is the crisis of the self, a shock imposed by our own biology (‘now that things have lost their common sense contemplation holds us together’). It is the shift of time which leads us to the unknown Stalker, the emptiness of dead rooms in space.
