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Esperpento

by Victor Morales

Photos by Skye Morse-Hodgson

Esperpento

by Victor Morales

Esperpento is an exploration about the rejection of the different and the dehumanization of the stranger. Why the foreigner (who looks different) is often shunned, despised and criminalized?

This virtual universe will work primarily as an immersive interactive installation and performance its first iteration will take place on the all Fall of 2018 at

3 Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in NYC.

INSTALLATION

October 16th - October 20, 2019

At B3 Biennial of the moving image

Festival  tickets:

https://www.b3biennale.de/Tickets.html

PERFORMANCE

October 11th - October 28th Thursday - Sunday 7:30pm - 8:30pm

Late night performances October 18th - October 20th 9:30 - 10:30

At 3LD Art and Technology Center | Studio B

Performance  tickets:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3556297

INSTALLATION

October 25th - 28th Thursday - Sunday 2pm - 6pm

At 3LD Art and Technology Center | Studio B

Installation tickets:

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3556230

Written by Billy Burns

Created by Victor Morales

 

Starring: Christine Schisano | Modesto Jimenez | Nikki Calonge

Production Designer: Andreea Mincic

Technical Director: Rebecca Key

Graphic / Web Designer and Animator: Yasmin Santana

Producer: Skye Morse-Hodgson

Stage Manager: Amy Bennett

Additional Software Programming: Jason Batcheller
Photos by: Skye Morse-Hodgson

Live Sound Design: Brian Fallon

Board Operator: Kevin Torres

Social Media Manager: Shloka Rathi

Interns: Joel Urena, Kira Samson, Lindsey Ruiz
 

Powered by:

Unreal Engine

3LD

XSENS

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Victor Morales is a Venezuelan Artist based in New York City since 1991. He completed a Master’s degree in Technology Applied to the Arts at New York University's Gallatin Division, in 1992. He is a director, performer and designer, whose work includes video animation and design, text, sound design, and digital puppetry. His work has travelled the world and he has collaborated with international artist such as Chris Kondek (Berlin), Joseph Silovsky (NYC), Jim Findlay (NYC), Findlay/Sandsmark (Norway), Joachim Schloemer (Germany), Wolfgang Mitterer (Austria) among others. He is Currently the Digital Technical Director at 3 Legged Dog in NYC.

Since 2003, Victor has been obsessed with the art of video game modifications and has implemented different game engines into most of the works he has produced. His solo work consists of an exploration of video game engines as simulation environments, where death and physics are transformed into dramatic and comedic real time performance.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Esperpento is a virtual space, inspired on the aesthetic vision of Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Specifically the War Paintings and his famous, Caprichos.

The project is a universe where tragedy, sarcasm, and comedy are portrayed as a deformed and apocalyptic mirror of reality; In this world, circumstance is the source of tragedy, and the grimace produced by this tragedy is what rules its form.

Esperpento is an exploration about the rejection of the different and the dehumanization of the stranger. Why the foreigner (who looks different) is often shunned, despised and criminalized?

This virtual universe will work primarily as an immersive interactive installation and performance its first iteration will take place on the all Fall of 2018 at 3 Legged Dog Art and Technology Center in NYC.

Esperpento (a Spanish literary term for “monstrosity”) is a digital performance event - a charged visual performance that allows the viewer to see through a monstrous lens. Rather than using the “monster” to critique societal ills, Esperpento embraces strangeness and deformity in order to challenge conventions of beauty, familiarity, and what is “normal” or “native” to the human condition.

Esperpento is a series of 3D digital events which explores the dehumanization of the stranger. In a vivid sequence of natural and manmade disasters, rendered through a real-time video game engine, victims and perpetrators collide with increasingly interchangeable ethnic, class and cultural markers. These "Esperpento Events" are a digital meditation on the rejection of foreignness, and why we shun those who look (or appear to look) different from the people in the US.

Goya’s War Disasters and Black Paintings are, in substance and form, a template for Esperpento. These paintings are a testament of genuine protest, full of style and piercing opinion, that simultaneously document and comment on reality.

The performance aspect of Esperpento is a play written by William Burns called “Two Red Lights and a Red One”. The play is a free adaptation from a spanish play “Luces de Bohemia” by Valle-Inclan. The show is about the vicissitudes of a blind Poet, Max Starpower,  who suffers through his blindness and the economic hardships of the “Esperpento” world. “Two Red Lights and a Red One" is a full-on digital puppetry extravaganza, utilizing new techniques specially developed for the show. It will be delivered by performers and 2 puppeteers. We are happy to announce that “Max Starpower” will be played by the great “Flako” Jimenez!

The Latino community and other minorities will be the main focus group for this production. The technology and the delivery of the animations are the major points for connection with these communities, basically promoting technology made by and for Latinos.

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR CONTRIBUTORS
 

James Cao, Yasmin Santana, Jonathan Butterick, The Magic Stranger, Oscar J Morales, Evelyn Morales, Marianne Weems, The Filthy Gillettes, Jennifer Mitchell, Oscar Morales Carrera, Matt Romein, Jony Perez, Dan Dobson, Scott Shepherd, Jason Batcheller, Steven Winders, Eric Dyer, Chantelle Norton, Joseph Silovsky, Erin Douglass, Ivan Talijancic + WaxFactory, Amanda Bender, Philip Bussmann, Maggie Hoffman, Molioce, Bill Kennedy, Ramona Clifton, Brian Bickerstaff, Peter Ksander, Alex West, Frank Boudreaux, Catharine Dill, James Findlay, Herobertson12, Susan Feldman, Robert Woodruff, Linda Lewett, Shevawn Norton, Ashley Justus, Jony Perez, Daniel Holsopple, Diane Ragsdale, Kamila Slawinski, Kim Guzowski, mtroco, Mariangela Lopez, Mariella Salazar, Joseph Silovsky, Marc Stephan, Christopher Kondek, Ivar Zeile, Hector Castillo, Ritu Rathi, Philipp Hochleichter, lienecafo, Shloka Rathi, Janet D Clancy, Mallory Catlett, Jeremy Shamos, Chantelle Norton.

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