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Buildups
by Adam Kaplan
2015, 5′
Original Format: Video CGI
Presented at VISIO – European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images – 8th edition
Courtesy the artist
In January 2010 a 30-minute long YouTube video was released by the Dubai police force. It profiles a group of Israeli secret Mossad agents on a mission to assassinate a senior Hamas military commander: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. They are filmed by security cameras as they move around the airports, malls and hotels of the Emirate’s capital before and after the unseen murder. In Buildups the artist recreates these real spaces in CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), resembling both architectural scale models and outdated computer games. The score is composed of buildups segments assembled from millennial trance music tracks. The juxtaposition between reality and fiction reinforces the absurdity of our times when war and violence are transformed into spectacle.
Adam Kaplan is a graduate of The Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and at Universität der Künste Berlin. Focusing on nostalgia, club culture and the “military entertainment complex”, his works deals with the way pop culture defines our memory. Growing up as a gamer in 1990’s Jerusalem, he was influenced by the intense relation between political turmoils and technological shifts of that time: military occupation on the television, exploding busses on the street, GTA on the computer. A mode of mixed perception between computer gameplays, news narratives and CGI realities. He has presented his work at various exhibitions and festivals, including Berlinale Forum Expanded, HKW (Berlin), ICA London, CCA Tel Aviv, Salt Galata (Istanbul), and CPH:DOX (Copenhagen).