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 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 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 videoludic imaginary. This investigation highlights the procedural homogeneity and the structural discriminations into game design: only a certain category of female Npc (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) denote 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 Npc’s 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.