Underw[h]e(a)re (2020)

Game photography, 100 screenshots, 3840 x 2160 (original resolution).

Digital video (1920 x 1080), color, sound, 8′ 33”, 2020.

During my raids in the videogame Assassin’s Creed: Unity (2014), an open world set during the French Revolution, I’ve sneaked under 100 privacies of a virtually, rhetorically exposed fair sex, discovering a uniquely aligned taste in dressing. In a context of cultural, social, and merch differences, the pulsating allurement of monopolistic capitalism is seductively alive. 

Started as a Game photography project, it expanded in the form of video (you can see a little exert here). Is an analytic and reflective work about the representational organization and the models of virtual economies within video ludic imaginary. This investigation highlights the procedural homogeneity and the structural discriminations in game design: only a certain category of female NPCs (the ones represented in the more wealthy way) has underwear and legs. This isn’t only an urge derived from technical aspects, but a syndrome that emphasizes both a certain way of thinking and specific design conventions. This enlightens what Alfie Bown (2019) denotes as a “call for enjoyment”, and the bulky issues that capitalism and neoliberalism impose on society. 

I’ve documented the feat with one hundred photos (or screenshot, if you prefer) and videos. The photographic project only consists of taking images of one hundred different female NPCs’ underwear. The video is a show-reel (that emulates fashion advertising) of every single underwear piece that I caught as a video. Every video has a duration of 5.01 seconds – except the last framing. The project’s title wants to mix and overlapping terms related to an object, a place, and a time.