Brody Condon

Extending software-hacking logic learned directly from online subcultures, Condon's work often appropriates and then ‘modifies’ historical events, recent cultural artefacts and other artworks. Examples include a two-hour ‘death match’ battle between medieval reenactors in a Los Angeles gallery (Untitled War, 2004), a computer simulation about the siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which the visitor plays a magical-spell- and AK-47-wielding David Koresh (Waco Resurrection, 2003), and a recent series of recreations of 15th-century Northern European religious paintings as noninteractive computer games that play themselves.

In Sonsbeek, he collaborated with Dutch and foreign designers and players of LARP events. LARP events consist of dozens or hundreds of players, all of whom act as if they were living in a fantasy world while keeping to strict rules of play. Outsiders are ignored because they are not part of the same reality as the gamers; this leads to unnerving and strange situations. In Sonsbeek park, Condon builded a watchtower in which participants could live and play according to the different scenarios designed by Condon with Danish game designer Bjarke Pederson.

Brody Condon's website www.tmpspace.com
Website for the L.A.R.P. event at Sonsbeek www.sonsbeeklive.org
General website for Sonsbeek www.sonsbeek2008.nl