peter burr


descent



In 1562, Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder completed a painting called The Triumph Of Death. In this panoramic landscape the sky is blotted out by black smoke; ships and dead fish litter the ocean shore; and an army of skeletons experiment with myriad death techniques. The living are badly outnumbered and the variety of fated tortures seems endless. There is little room for whimsy in this tableaux.

Over 200 years earlier, a nasty plague, commonly known as the Black Death, left a cruel and massive mark on european civilization, wiping out half of Europe’s total population. This was a quiet pervasion of death - an invisible pathogen carried by herds of tired rats. This plague triggered a series of social and economic upheavals with profound effects on the history of medieval Europe, guiding its survivors into the sort of self-inflicted darkness pictured by the Elder Bruegel.

Looking back at this historical trajector alongside Mark Fingerhut and Forma I created a spiraling digital virus aptly titled DESCENT - a meditation on one of humanity’s blackest hours. Taking the form of a desktop application, descent.exe gives the user a brief glimpse of a world descending into darkness - an unrelenting plague indifferent to the struggles of the user. There is a silver lining, however, tucked into the software’s final sweep. An equanimous watcher, reduced to a single eye, looks on as the plague of rats that has infested your desktop destroys itself.

The PC-only executable file is currently available online through Undervolt.
View video documentation here.

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EXHIBITION HISTORY
-2023- Museu do Amanha. Rio de Janeiro, BR
-2023- FWBFest. Idyllwild, CA
-2023- Massivart. Montreal, QC
-2019- Teatro Gayarre. Pamplona, ES
-2019- Fiesp Cultural Center. Sao Paolo, BR
-2019- Yeltsin Center. Yekaterinburg, RU
-2019-  Espaciocenter Canarias. Bilbao, ES
-2019- EM-Filmtheater. Stuttgart, DE
-2019- Dum Stepanka Netolickeho Gallery. Trebon, CZ
-2019-  Fundacja Promocji Kultury Artystycznej. Krakow, PL
-2019-  Drumul Taberei. Bucharest, RO
-2019- 
Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design. Hong Kong, CN
-2019-  One Night Gallery, Bucharest, RO
-2019-  Central Academy of Fine Arts. Beijing, CN
-2019- 
Kinoteatr Kiev. Kiev, UA
-2019-  Fundacja Photon. Krakow, PO
-2019-  Kulturhaus Abraxas. Augsburg, DE
-2019-  Museum of the Yugoslav Film Archive. Belgrade, RS
-2019-  Microwave. Hong Kong, CN
-2019-  Hansen House. Jerusalem, IL
-2019-  New Chitose Airport. Sapporo, JP
-2019- Toshima Center. Tokyo, JP
-2019-  Sea World Culture and Arts Center. Guangzhou, CN
-2018- Prix Ars Electronica Exhibition. Linz, AT
-2018- Ars Electronica Animation Festival. Linz, AT
-2018- London Art Fair. London, UK
-2018- South Kiosk. London, UK
-2017- Vector Festival. Toronto, ON
-2017- File Festival. Sao Paolo, BR
-2017- Squat Gallery. Brooklyn, NY



AWARDS
-2018 Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mention

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