Pub Date : 2019-12-31DOI: 10.2478/9783110623758-fm
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Pub Date : 2019-12-31DOI: 10.2478/9783110623758-006
Hava Aldouby
In the last two decades, moving-image artists have ventured into the world of popular video games, crossing the threshold and asserting agency in the game world. Filmmaking in the terrain of virtual reality was made possible around the turn of the millennium by the development of first-person shooter (FPS) games. Now able to interact with a real-time game engine, gamers could influence the narrative and move freely in virtual environments.1 The present essay addresses the shift to filmmaking in video games, through a close look at one filmmaker’s venture into the gamescapes of Grand Theft Auto (hereafter GTA), a widely popular game of street gang warfare. Phil Solomon, an experimental filmmaker and a prominent figure in the American film avant-garde, shifted to virtual reality in 2005. Crossing over from film-based work to the virtual domain, he has produced a corpus of short films under the title In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952–2005), referencing the suicide of his close friend and fellow filmmaker. An uncanny note suffuses these films, very unlike the irony that generally characterizes machinima – the generic title for in-game filmmaking. Machinima is primarily associated with “media resistance ... entrenched in radical politics.”2 In the present essay, I prefer considering Solomon as a romantic tightrope walker, poised precariously on a thin dividing line and eternally suspended between unreachable points of safety. Taking up Mieke Bal’s concept of “migratory aesthetics,”3 this essay will discuss Solomon’s voyage through GTA’s “unhomely”4 spaces and how it maps onto the migratory condition that is deeply affecting contemporary culture.5 Attention to the “aesthetic dimension of the social phenomenon of the movement of people,” to quote Bal,6 may shed new light on filmmaking in the liminal spaces of game worlds, as a cultural practice that taps migratory tensions and anxieties. As noted by Soraya Murray, the sites of Grand Theft Auto function as “stages upon which to act out modes of compensation for the extreme instability of ... subject position, financial status,
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Pub Date : 2019-12-31DOI: 10.2478/9783110623758-003
Olga Levitan
The Jerusalem rakevet kalah (Light Rail Train, henceforth “LRT” or “train”), a relatively new phenomenon in Jerusalem daily life, raised a variety of social, political, urban, and cultural issues.1 Its inauguration in 2011 opened an unfamiliar, new space in a unique city characterized by religious and national contestation on a local and global scale. The challengers for the city’s “ownership” assert their claims via the construction of monuments and museums and in performative acts, transforming the urban space of the city into a constantly evolving stage. Daily social performances become performance art and, in accordance with the laws of theater, they bring the conflicting parties closer, both emphasizing and reconciling conflicts. In this essay, I shall explore the blurring of boundaries between life and theater in relation to the new complex reality created by the Jerusalem light rail. Plans called for the train to begin operating in 2006. The five-year delay in its inauguration drew official criticism by the state comptroller2 and generated a wide range of city folklore, jokes, and prophecies. As a resident of the city, I recall numerous taxi conversations, in which drivers mainly cursed this innovation, predicting the disasters that the LRT would cause. These included traffic disruptions because the main traffic artery in the city center would be closed for all transport except the train. People also predicted that passengers would experience difficulties because of the cancellation of a number of bus lines in the city center. Finally, some critics envisioned that the train would exacerbate the intercultural and political problems endemic to the socio-cultural reality of Jerusalem. The train route is particularly important with regard to this last point. The existing LRT line (more lines are planned for the future) is T-shaped. Its first half crosses the city from north to south; the second one, from east to west. The first half of the train route organically links the northeastern sections of the city, in which most residents are Palestinians, to the Old City and the predominantly West Jerusalem downtown. This route evoked undisguised anxiety among large parts of the Jewish population and undisguised resentment among the Palestinian population toward these Jewish fears. Jewish taxi drivers talked about the risk of terrorist attacks, stone throwing, and possible damage to stations and train cars when the train crosses the Palestinian neighbourhoods. Palestinian taxi drivers emphasized to me that the Arab population of Jerusalem was entitled to the same right to enjoy the various benefits
{"title":"The New Jerusalem Light Rail Train as a Performance Space","authors":"Olga Levitan","doi":"10.2478/9783110623758-003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2478/9783110623758-003","url":null,"abstract":"The Jerusalem rakevet kalah (Light Rail Train, henceforth “LRT” or “train”), a relatively new phenomenon in Jerusalem daily life, raised a variety of social, political, urban, and cultural issues.1 Its inauguration in 2011 opened an unfamiliar, new space in a unique city characterized by religious and national contestation on a local and global scale. The challengers for the city’s “ownership” assert their claims via the construction of monuments and museums and in performative acts, transforming the urban space of the city into a constantly evolving stage. Daily social performances become performance art and, in accordance with the laws of theater, they bring the conflicting parties closer, both emphasizing and reconciling conflicts. In this essay, I shall explore the blurring of boundaries between life and theater in relation to the new complex reality created by the Jerusalem light rail. Plans called for the train to begin operating in 2006. The five-year delay in its inauguration drew official criticism by the state comptroller2 and generated a wide range of city folklore, jokes, and prophecies. As a resident of the city, I recall numerous taxi conversations, in which drivers mainly cursed this innovation, predicting the disasters that the LRT would cause. These included traffic disruptions because the main traffic artery in the city center would be closed for all transport except the train. People also predicted that passengers would experience difficulties because of the cancellation of a number of bus lines in the city center. Finally, some critics envisioned that the train would exacerbate the intercultural and political problems endemic to the socio-cultural reality of Jerusalem. The train route is particularly important with regard to this last point. The existing LRT line (more lines are planned for the future) is T-shaped. Its first half crosses the city from north to south; the second one, from east to west. The first half of the train route organically links the northeastern sections of the city, in which most residents are Palestinians, to the Old City and the predominantly West Jerusalem downtown. This route evoked undisguised anxiety among large parts of the Jewish population and undisguised resentment among the Palestinian population toward these Jewish fears. Jewish taxi drivers talked about the risk of terrorist attacks, stone throwing, and possible damage to stations and train cars when the train crosses the Palestinian neighbourhoods. Palestinian taxi drivers emphasized to me that the Arab population of Jerusalem was entitled to the same right to enjoy the various benefits","PeriodicalId":166006,"journal":{"name":"Borderlines: Essays on Mapping and The Logic of Place","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125928978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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