Video Games 👾
A message from Athina:
Do we know what the artefacts that surround us are? Do we know their exact origin or time period?
Do we know the culture or ethnicity they derive from? We are constantly surrounded by various ‘products of civilisation’ from gum wrapping and milk cartons to vintage furniture and religious objects. There is a chance we’d even stumble upon some great historical artefact and wouldn’t even realise it’s any different from the products or trash of our current civilisation around it. But what was sometimes trash or trivial in the ancient time, is considered important now the same way that our gum wrapping would be of value to a future civilisation and that’s what’s astonishing to me: the multifaceted universe that all of these bits and pieces weave. This observation is not a critique on how we are unaware of cultural and historical facts, it is rather a comment on what is considered important or mundane, sacred or vulgar, functional or artistic, ancient or contemporary, national or multicultural, religious or decorative. I find that there is one other space besides reality that unapologetically and even intentionally merges a multitude of visuals from such diverse origins and that is the realm of video games. This is a series of illustrations documenting this raw freedom of patching everything together like in a video game environment, though if you look closely at your living room or the doctor’s waiting room or a schoolroom, the massive cross-referencing is also there in real life. Except here you only have one! (wink).
Thessaloniki Greece, July 2022
