THOMAS HAWRANKE
Grand Ape Town
Machinima-Installation, HD, 13:30 minutes, 2018
Welcome to Grand Ape Town, a city much better than Los Santos. In it, animal and non-animal individuals live together, drink and party, buy dazzling clothes and drive fast cars. Grand Ape Town is a modified Los Santos: a place that has emancipated itself from the pre-conceived structure of its creators. If 'the animal' was subjected to human actions through violence and ridicule, it is now the chimpanzees who are writing the great narrations of the city with us. Enter and follow the paths of a shared past. They lead us through sparkling skyscraper canyons, into the infrastructures of the urban periphery and into the dreariness of a common wilderness. As an offer to the viewers in Grand Ape Town, the responding between chimpanzees and humans can be carried out as a trial action. The encounters at eye level take place in the simulated space of the computer game. Instead of merely reacting to the situation, the common actions are the focus of the movie. There is only a »we« left and no longer the distinction between us and the others.
Images © Thomas Hawranke