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OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
In RPGs (role-playing game), one could say that real life can be rehearsed in a superstitious manner, with supernatural beings and worlds. Since the emergence of computer processing power and video games, the third world was a source for worldbuilding and space to apply game operations. Those games are not isolated from the socio-cultural and political environment that they are developed in. On the other hand, third-world gamers, developers, streamers, and hackers managed to modify those games and apply their own hyperreality in order to rehearse their world. This project explores how Palestinian players, GTA mods, and servers are simulating real life under colonial rule. Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another - Rehearsal examines Los Santos as a corollary to Palestine.
Commissioned by Singapore Art Museum.
- Year2023
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish
OUT OF BOUNDS is a film program that takes a cue from ICED!: I Can End Deportation (2008), a role-playing video game in the ArteArchive that educates players on immigration laws on detention and deportation that affect legal permanent residents, asylum seekers, students, and undocumented people in the U.S.
The program comprises recent shorts by filmmakers Yanni Mohand Briki, Bahareh Khoshooee, Sara Sadik, and Firas Shehadeh, who take different approaches to retooling gaming software and their aesthetics. Presented together, their works showcase a range of potentials present in gaming as a mass medium–education, entertainment, escape, world building–and through modding and aesthetic interventions, the ability to also hijack meaning.
Bahareh Khoshooee’s MAXMOTIVES: Episode 1 (2020) is an ongoing web series that follows the life of seven alter egos and an unwanted newborn “non-resident alien,” filmed and produced in The Sims 2 video game.
Part of Firas Shehadeh’s ongoing research into video games and Palestinian youth culture, Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another — Rehearsal (2023) combines footage of Twitch streamers and custom game mods for Grand Theft Auto V to explore how players simulate life under occupation.
Also using Grand Theft Auto V, Sara Sadik’s Khtobtogone (2021) is a character study of protagonist Zine, who wrestles with heartbreak while reflecting more broadly on masculinity and coming of age in Marseille’s Maghrebi community.
The program closes with Yannis Mohand Briki’s Yesterday was my birthday so I asked for legs to run away (2025), which considers the fate of video game characters left behind by players, serving as both a meditation on virtual obsolescence and an elegy for the optimism of the late 2000s.
OUT OF BOUNDS is co-presented by ArteEast and Millennium Film Workshop, and guest curated by May Makki. This program is part of ArteEast’s legacy program Unpacking the ArteArchive, which presents films from the ArteArhive in dialogue with contemporary voices. The films will be screened in-person at Millennium Film Workshop on June 17th followed by a discussion with Bahareh Khoshooee moderated by the curator.
Original program materials by ArteEast licensed under CC BY 4.0. This does not apply to films or third-party content.
In RPGs (role-playing game), one could say that real life can be rehearsed in a superstitious manner, with supernatural beings and worlds. Since the emergence of computer processing power and video games, the third world was a source for worldbuilding and space to apply game operations. Those games are not isolated from the socio-cultural and political environment that they are developed in. On the other hand, third-world gamers, developers, streamers, and hackers managed to modify those games and apply their own hyperreality in order to rehearse their world. This project explores how Palestinian players, GTA mods, and servers are simulating real life under colonial rule. Like An Event In A Dream Dreamt By Another - Rehearsal examines Los Santos as a corollary to Palestine.
Commissioned by Singapore Art Museum.
- Year2023
- Runtime14 minutes
- LanguageEnglish
- CountryPalestine
- Subtitle LanguageEnglish