Sin Sol at the 7th Thessaloniki Biennale in Greece

Sin Sol, Prototype, one installation of the overall project Sin Sol, being created in the Critical Realities Studio, has been exhibited and performed at the 7th Thessaloniki Biennale in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Sin Sol / No Sun is an augmented reality game that allows users to experience the feelings a climate change event, in order to deeply consider how climate change disproportionately effects immigrants, trans people and disabled people. Players can find, see and hear a story told through poetry about living through climate change induced wildfires, from a trans latinx AI hologram, Aura. Set fifty years in the future, Aura tells the story of environmental collapse from the past, which is our present in 2018. Part environmental archiving project, the environments in the game include actual 3-D scans of present day forests from the Pacific Northwest. With the goal of multispecies survival and solidarity in mind, Aura’s dog, Roja, leads players on a journey to escape the wildfires and find oxygen capsules which contain poetry, telling more of the story as they progress through the game.

Game design, Writing and Direction by micha cárdenas
Environments, Writing and Installation Design by Abraham Avnisan
3-D modeling by Marcelo Viana Neto and Adrian Phillips
Soundtrack by Wynne Greenwood
Character Design by Morgan Thomas

The theme of the biennale is “Taking a Stance”. The curatorial statement asks: “Would it be possible for a biennale to become both a point of stasis, and the starting point for reflection on the crucial issues that contemporary societies are facing in the current conditions of acceleration and increasing inequality? To examine, from a critical distance, people’s standpoint towards the world and the planet? To bridge the gap between the viewer and contemporary art and to overcome curatorial and institutional complacency in order to get to the core of politics and daily life, also by reconsidering artistic practice as a condition of labor both within and outside institutions and norms?”