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Cory Arcangel

CORY ARCANGEL

Totally Fucked Lisson Gallery 12 November–19 December 2020 Cork Street, London
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Press Release

Totally Fucked (2003) is the focus of Lisson Gallery’s second show at 22 Cork Street. This historic work by Cory Arcangel is an infinite loop where the famed figure, Super Mario, is stuck on a block in a sea of blue pixels. This rarely-seen artwork is a video generated by a Nintendo Entertainment System playing a Super Mario Bros. cartridge which has been hacked by Arcangel.

Viewable from the street (and open physically as soon as regulations allow), as well as downloadable as a ROM file from the artist’s website & Github account, Totally Fucked is a commentary on our obsession with technology and the absurdity of our expectation of it to enhance our lives. Like many of Arcangel’s works, the game is modified so that the character is destined to fail—the resulting animation emits a sense of persistent, infinite frustration, representing our universal experience of dealing with modern technology, as well as being a fitting, wry expression of this past year.

From 12 November to 1 December, Arcangel’s Totally Fucked is presented concurrently on Lisson Gallery’s website as a .NES ROM—a virtual copy of the physical cartridge—running live in the browser via the javascript Nintendo emulator JSNES.

Further information on Totally Fucked is available via coryarcangel.com.

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Installation Views

Cory Arcangel Conversation Cory Arcangel The fun thing... is to take things that people don’t consider to have value and put them into a context where value is generated or usually projected on content. It’s just an experiment, really. Read the story
About the Artist

Cory Arcangel is a leading exponent of technology-based art, drawn to video games and software for their ability to rapidly formulate new communities and traditions and, equally, their speed of obsolescence. It was in 1996, while studying classical guitar at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, that he first had a high-speed internet connection – inspiring him to major in music technology and start learning to code. Both music and coding remain his key tools for interrogating the stated purpose of software and gadgets. In Super Mario Clouds, 2002-onward, for example, he disabled the vintage Nintendo game to leave only the iconic backdrop of blue sky and clouds; in Drei Klavierstücke op.11, 2009, Arcangel recreated Arnold Schoenberg’s 1909 score of the same name by editing together YouTube clips of cats playing pianos, note for note, paw by paw. Outcomes can be surprising, funny and poignant, whether in the final form of installation, video, printed media or music composition, in the gallery or on the world wide web. Reconfiguring web design and hacking as artistic practice, Arcangel remains faithful to open source culture and makes his work and methods available online, thus superimposing a perpetual question-mark as to the value of the art object.

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Address
22 Cork Street
London
United Kingdom
Opening Hours
Now closed
(1)
London 22 Cork Street
Lisson Gallery contemporary art gallery in Cork Street London United Kingdom
Lisson Gallery
22 Cork Street, London, United Kingdom
+44 020 772 427 39
http://www.lissongallery.com

Opening hours
Now closed
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