Evoking imagery and memories of the atomic age, THE PLASTIC GARDEN summons the ghost of a forgotten future, the grim fatality of a total nuclear war that held the world hostage half a century ago.

 

Hacking and appropriating the popular video game CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS (2010), THE PLASTIC GARDEN revisited the dark vision and symbolism of the nuclear drama that seems on the one hand remotely archaic, but hauntingly close and familiar on the other. The restaged scenes, devoid of bloody shootouts, are equally if not more lethal and violent than in the original game. THE PLASTIC GARDEN unravels a forgotten future that felt like an endless nightmare spinning loose, or else a collective death wish that comes to define the tragic essence of modern socio-political reality.

 

keywords: experimental cinema, machinima, media hacking, game art, appropriation, Call of Duty, nuclear war