Last Riot at Valle dei Templi
Situated near the SW Sicilian coast is the town of Agrigento, home of the so-called “Valley of the Temples” (Valle dei Templi), a ridge of land above the ancient city that is the site of a linear cluster of (mainly) Ancient Greek ruins, many of which are quite spectacular — the place is well worth a visit. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In addition to the Greek and Byzantine remains, there is the Villa Aurea, which was home to 19th Century British military officer and archaeological patron Alexander Hardcastle, who financed, among other things, the re-erection of the pillars at the Temple of Heracles on the site.
Today, the Valle dei Templi is not simply a collection of ancient sites: it’s also a location for modern art which is distributed among the ruins and elsewhere, such as in the Villa.
Thus it was that on a recent visit I encountered this remarkable piece of statuary in the Villa Aurea garden, in brilliant, shiny white material showing a group of fashionably-dressed young people poised to kill one of their number with various weapons. What on Earth was this amazing piece of work? There was no indication on or near the piece to indicate its origin or significance.
After a surprisingly lengthy Internet search, I found the answer. It is a (small) part of a multimedia collection of works by the Moscow-based art group “AES+F” titled Last Riot/Last Riot 2.
AES+F are named after their initials: the group, founded in 1987, was originally AES — Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich and Evgeny Svyatsky — but they were later joined by photographer Vladimir Fridkes — hence the “+F”.
Last Riot first appeared in 2007 at the Venice Biennial as a three-screen video providing windows into a highly detailed 3D virtual environment, inspired apparently by the US Army video game “America’s Army”, created to encourage young people to enlist. You can see excerpts from it here:
AES+F say about the work:
“The virtual world generated by the real world of the past twentieth century as the organism coming from a test-tube, expands, leaving its borders and grasping new zones, absorbs its founders and mutates in something absolutely new. In this new world the real wars look like a game on www.americasarmy.com, and prison tortures appear sadistic exercises of modern valkyrias. Technologies and materials transform the artificial environment and techniques into a fantasy landscape of the new epos. This paradise also is a mutated world with frozen time where all past epoch the neighbor with the future, where inhabitants lose their sex, and become closer to angels. The world, where any most severe, vague or erotic imagination is natural in the fake unsteady 3D perspective. The heroes of new epos have only one identity, the identity of the rebel of last riot. The last riot, where all are fighting against all and against themselves, where no difference exists any more between victim and aggressor, male and female. This world celebrates the end of ideology, history and ethic.”
In addition to the video, there are series of glossy white sculptures of which the example at the Villa is one, and remarkable still images featuring the same weaponised, brand-name-dressed young people, in a kind of superrealistic style that somehow echoes works of the Renaissance as much as they do CGI-created videogame characters.
Here’s the statue from the Villa in an art gallery setting (from the AES+F web site):
…and one of the images from the same source:
I would love to experience the original video as well as the other pieces, especially given my interest in virtual worlds. Kudos to the people who arrange the art exhibitions along the Valle dei Templi for introducing me — and many other people I hope — to the stunning work of a fascinating group of artists.
Visit the AES/AES+F web site
Last Riot on the AES+F web site
