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What you see on the screen in the installation SELO (2024) looks like a videogame, but is something else. It is not a prerecorded video either. What you are looking at is a so-called live simulation. Alexander Jermilov (1995) built the digital world where this simulation takes place and provided the characters with their appearances and a complex set of characteristics. But what subsequently takes place in this world is beyond his control. The game plays itself, controlled by an algorithm.
In a visual sense, Jermilov found inspiration for his simulation in Pieter Bruegel’s and Jheronimus Bosch’s depictions of peasant life in the late middle ages. Conceptually, the project is inspired by the ideas of the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han compares contemporary society to the middle ages, a time when people sought comfort in magic and superstition. He claims that today, many people also experience the world as a confusing place. While searching for something to hold on to, they again find refuge in simplistic and often irrational beliefs, think for instance of conspiracy theories and the growing popularity of all kinds of esoteric practices, like fortune-telling and astrology.
Jermilov’s digital microcosm allows characters who each have their own, often contradictory, ideologies and beliefs to clash. Their interactions determine the outcome. How will they react to each other? Will they bash each other’s brains in within ten minutes? Or will they succeed in convincing each other of their own world views and convictions? The story of the simulation changes as they adapt to each other and their environment. Jermilov thus underlines how unstable and unpredictable world views can be.
Tekst: Sarah van Binsbergen
Translated from Dutch by Marie Louise Schoondergang (The Art of Translation)