ED FORNIELES - CEL
Editor, Technical Support
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Gallery
Athens Biennale 2018
Directed by Ed Fornieles
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"‘Cel’ is a role-playing game designed by the artist. Filmed on chest cams and CCTV, a group of people lived in a house for two days, performing hierarchical roles, split into tiers of dominance and submission. Their treatment of each other becomes increasingly demeaning: participants are forcibly shaved, punched, pissed on and screamed at. They reorganise according to shows of strength or social dominance. Eventually, as the aggression peaks and the testosterone erupts into brutality, things calm down, participants realise where their anger is stemming from. They’re the products of uncaring society or of parental negligence or abuse: their anger and hatred has a root cause.
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It’s halfway between something like the Stanford Prison Experiment and a particularly nasty episode of ‘Big Brother’. Everything’s grainy, rough, filthy – a technological aesthetic that echoes YouTube reels of street fights and urban violence." - TIME OUT
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