STORM AND STRESS | CARSOON LYNN

Storm and Stress (2021) by Carson Lynn is the second video presented by FILTRO, the third edition of DIGITAL VIDEO WALL curated by Gemma Fantacci. The program proposes a survey in the artistic field of the research results of five international artists on the tools offered by digital. FILTRO (filter) is intended in its double meaning: as a device that allows real or virtual changes to be made, and as a lens through which we experience an altered vision of reality.

The second screening is dedicated to Storm and Stress, Carson Lynn’s video in which the artist uses digital contents and dimensions to propose a queer reinterpretation of heterocentric gaming systems and relation with the digital landscape. Carson Lynn works with Machinima – non-interactive audiovisual production produced with video games – in order to deconstruct and recontextualize the interactive and virtual spaces of video games and stereotypes belonging to videogame culture. The avatar used by the artist abandons the armed clash with the other characters, thus subverting the heteronormative binary system typical of many video games, moreover he dedicates himself to the observation of the landscape that surrounds him, recalling that type of predisposition to the landscape which characterized the artistic current of Romanticism.

Storm and Stress is the result of  Lot Residency # 07 project, curated by Silicon Valet on their Instagram page, in August 2020. Storm and Stress was created within the video games series Destiny, in which the artist refuses to engage into gunfight with other players to embark on a personal journey within the natural landscape of the game. Influenced by the work of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich and the proto-romantic movement Sturm und Drang (1760-1780), Carson Lynn takes advantage of a series of exploits within the two chapters of the series to depart from the battlefield and the frequently homophobic and chauvinistic dynamics of the online community to freely explore the video game landscape. Inside this new dimension discovered by the artist is now possible to embark on a new quest of personal experimentation in which he can express himself and «be as queer as he wishes».

© Carson Lynn, Storm and Stress, Still, 2021

07/02/2022