Rare Earth - Mark Tribe
Mark Tribe’s Rare Earth series is comprised of videos of forested militia training camps in America juxtaposed with large photographic prints of screenshots of equally lush levels from first-person shooter video games. The work initially seems to be teasing out connections between macho fantasies of violence and our visual language for representing beauty in the genre of landscape. But over time, the combination starts to unfold another register: the way that some Western traditions of realism and macho dominance combine to form the notion of “the sublime” that is a fantasy of white, male, heterosexual anxiety. By plunging into the uncanny valley, digitizing the real landscape on large LCD screens, and making the digital worlds of video games physical with sumptuous photographic prints, Tribe crafts a subtly multilayered project that draws together and implicate the complex of violent fantasy and historical realism that produces an imago of the natural landscape as a theatrical site for violence.
Artist: Mark Tribe
Link: http://www.marktribe.net/rare-earth/
Connections:
Roger Fenton - Valley of the Shadow Of Death
Nikki Woods - Gunslingers
An-My Lê - Small Wars