SOLA
SOLA is a video game that embodies the climate of tension, discomfort and fear that can be experienced while walking alone at night in cities where gender-based violence is embedded in everyday life. SOLA challenges the usual understanding of games as a source for entertainment and it builds on the concept of play to explore a video game as an instrument for conceptual thinking and a tool to work through social issues.
Street harassment sits on the base of a structure that perpetuates a culture of violence. Feminicide is the ultimate link of a chain of violence entrenched in a structure that exploits, desecrates and discards our bodies. There was one feminicide every 30 hours in Argentina in 2017. We were told that it was our responsibility to not be aggressed, raped or even killed. (extract from “A Research-Creation Approach to Gender-Based Violence” Isidori 2018)
How do we get back home?
Do we walk or take a cab?
Do we take the short cut, or the better- lit path?
Do we let someone know that we are on our way
just in case we never arrive?
We were taught how to walk with fear.
We were taught how to be constantly alert.
We were taught to be suspicious of the stranger.
We learned how to be constantly afraid
while doing something as simple as walking alone at night.
We were taught that it was our responsibility
to not be assaulted, raped or killed.
Conception and direction: Agustina Isidori
Collaborators: Etienne Brunelle-Leclerc and Samuelle Bourgault
Exhibitions & Presentations
HomoLudens Videojuegos para entender el presente - Spain tour | 2021 - 2025
Antifa Art&Games. Bari, Italy | 2019
Teorema Festival de Arte Interactivo. Bartcelona, Spain | 2018
WePlay! Barcelona, Spain | 2018
Whaaat?! Festival for games and experimental interactions. Boulder Colorado, U.S. | 2018
ARS ELECTRONICA Festival - Taking Care Exhibition. Linz, Austria | 2018
You Are Here. Concordia Uni. Montreal | 2018
Synopses. Concordia University. Montreal | 2018.
FDG. International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Cape Cod, USA | 2017
The Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology
Symposium. New London, U.S | 2017
Curieux de Jeux / Game Curious Montréal. UQAM | 2017
Game On Festival. Buenos Aires, Argentina | 2017
Presentations & Published text
MAC Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montreal
Exhibition “Mundos” | 2017
ISEA 2019 - Paper: Gender-based Violence and Video Games: Towards a Socially Responsible Design Practice
COMPOSITE # 13 Montreal | 2017
Spirale Magazine Culturel. SOLA. Special Issue Women and Mass violence
FDG 2018 - Paper: Gender-based Violence and Video Games: Towards a Socially Responsible Design Practice
Paratext - Hangar Centre - Barcelona | 2017TEOREMA Festival. Barcelona, Spain. 2018.
Spirale Magazine culturel / Special issue FEMMES ET VIOLENCE DE MASSE - WOMEN AND MASS VIOLENCE
PRESS
8#M / NI UNA MENOS “No fear on the street” by Patricia Martino (LA CAPITAL newspaper, print)
"SOLA, a video game to create awareness about gender-based violence” by Andrea Catalano
“SOLA, video games can also talk about feminicide” by Florencia Orsetti
SOLA
SOLA recrea la experiencia personal de caminar con miedo por la noche en ciudades donde la violencia de genero está constantemente presente en el día a día. ¿cómo se siente caminar con el peso del miedo sobre el cuerpo?
nos enseñaron a caminar con miedo, a temer del desconocido, a tener extremo cuidado al caminar solas de noche. ¿cómo volvemos a casa? ¿caminamos, nos tomamos un colectivo, un taxi? ¿elegimos el camino más corto o el más iluminado? ¿avisamos a alguien que estamos en camino para que se preocupen si no llegamos nunca? nos dijeron que era nuestra responsabilidad el no ser agredidas, violadas, matadas. nuestros cuerpos están enmarcados en una estructura hetero-patriarcal, minada por un pensamiento capitalista en donde el cuerpo-objeto es percibido como explotable y desechable. dentro de este mandato y estructura machista, el espacio público se inscribe como aquel lugar en donde nuestros cuerpos son robados y posteriormente desechados como basura. cuando hablamos de feminicidio hace falta entender que nos referimos al último eslabón de una cadena de violencia naturalizada que es continua y periódicamente ejercida sobre el cuerpo: desde la violencia verbal, el piropo callejero hasta la aplicación de modos de tortura y ejecución sobre nuestros cuerpos.
SOLA experimenta con y cuestiona lo que comúnmente se entiende como un medio de entretenimiento: los videos juegos. Tomando como base el concepto de juego, SOLA se propone como una herramienta para generar pensamiento critico y reflexión/acción en torno a la temática de acoso callejero.