AES+F // Last Riot

"In this new world, real war looks like a virtual-reality game, and prison torture appears as the sadistic exercises of modern valkyries. Technologies and materials transform the artificial environment into a fantasy landscape of the new age. This paradise is also a mutated world where time is frozen, where all past epochs neighbour the future, where inhabitants lose their sex and become closer to angels – a world where the most severe, vague or erotic imagination is natural in the fake, unsteady 3D perspective." -from artist statement



Last week Dr. Erika Wolf presented the single channel digital video work 'Last Riot' by Russian artists AES+F. Their work is something I have looked to for inspiration many times, but until now I have only viewed and understood them as still photographic works. Seeing them now as moving images they become something completely different.
A few key things to recognize from the presentation:

-The work is not just a simple continuous video. It utilizes a program which morphs still photographs into one another, making the work appear as though it is stopping and starting, or moving backwards at times.

-The disjointed flow narrative does not progress, and moves in circles in a way. There is this constant anticipation of action, and you can’t help but wish that there was some kind of impact or resolve.

-“Group isolation” of subjects and actors. Interplay between people is somehow strained and unnatural, there's almost moments of contact, but not quite.

-“Movie Realism” plays on concept of violence, though there is no impact, no blood. Reminiscent of the virtual gaming world.

-Post, post photography and a return to academic painting techniques (Baroque painting, Caravaggio, Michaelangelo).