| Chris Reilly | |||||
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| Everything I Do is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference real-time video performance 5 minutes 33 seconds 2005 |
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Everything I Do is Art, But Nothing I Do Makes Any Difference is a playable level for the popular first-person shooter video game, Half Life 2.
I made this as a direct response to the installation work of Pat Rios.
Pat and I are pretty close friends, and we have worked together on projects in the past.
As often happens between two young guys working towards similar ends, we've formed a pretty interesting
relationship of competitive support, simultaneously feeding off one another's ideas while at the same time trying to
outdo the other.
Pat's installation consisted of an entire room basically filled with crap. Drawings, notebook pages, photos, half-a-dozen video monitors, two computers, a huge desk, a bar booth, sticky hands, etc., etc. His schtick is pretty much 'everything I do is art.' I think he definitely pulls it off, but when he asked me to do some sort of performance for the closing party, I thought, well, what better way to respond than to create a virtual replica and just blow it all up? After all, if everything you do is art, that's kind of like saying nothing you do is art; everything's on the same level. That condition goes along well with a video game, where everything is basically without consequence. If you die, just start over and everything's back to the way it was. Also, I think the meticulous care and attention that goes into re-creating a specific environment, countered with the destruction and nihilism of blowing it up parallels our friendship quite appropriately. |