author: matteo bittanti (concept, text, gameplay, execution)
title: bruno
year: 2009
format: digital video; 5 minutes and 39 seconds
soundtrack: game sounds; "L'amante morte" by Je Te N'Aime Plus (La prima cosa, Venus, 2003) - see below
Disclaimer: "bruno" is not endorsed or developed in conjunction with DICE/Electronic Arts.
Related news: here (November 27, 2004 at 02:30 PM)
Description: Digital video: Edited gameplay footage of Mirror's Edge (DICE/Electronic Arts, 2008).
Media: video (low resolution version)
Artist statement
Five years ago, Bruno jumped.
When they gave me the news, on the phone, I dismissed it as a bad joke.
"It's not funny" I said.
“It’s online – they replied – on a forum. It says: 'Bruno is gone'”.
I did not believe it.
I did not want to believe it.
Besides, we were supposed to meet soon.
Heck, we were supposed to meet the previous weekend, but he could not make it.
Alas, it was not a joke.
Bruno was gone.
On Friday November 26, 2004, around 5.30 pm, Bruno jumped out of a 5-store building in Lodi, Italy.
His parents’ apartment.
He was 28.
He was a rock star.
He was a gamer.
He was one of my best friends.
It took me years to make sense of that event.
And I failed.
I still cannot understand.
According to Slavoj Zizek, when reality is too overwhelming or intense or unexpected, it "shatters the coordinates of our world" and we, as humans, have to fictionalize it to accept it. The implication is that fantasy is the true fabric of reality. Without fantasies, there could be no realities. Another way of saying this is that we tell stories to make sense of things.
We tell stories to survive.
Occasionally, when it's very late at night, and I can't sleep, I find myself staring at the ceiling and thinking about that day.
I wonder if I could have done something to prevent that tragedy from happening.
Things I should have seen. Things I could have said.
Should have. Could have. L'esprit d'escalier.
Above all.
I wonder what thoughts went through Bruno’s mind before he jumped.
I wonder if he kept saying “So far so good... so far so good... so far so good” to reassure himself on his way down past each floor, like that guy in La Haine, a movie we discussed so many times. I would have reminded him that “How you fall doesn't matter. It's how you land!”. And then we would have laughed.
I wonder if he remembered chapter 14 of The Catcher in the Rye, especially that passage: “I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed. I didn’t want a bunch of stupid rubbernecks looking at me when I was all gory”. Bruno was so much like Holden. Or maybe not enough.
I wonder if Bruno thought that he had superpowers, like the characters of his favorite comic books, or three lives, like the characters of his favorite video games.
I wonder if Bruno would have liked Scott Snibbe and Annie Loui’s installation, “Falling Girl”.
I wonder if Bruno would have laughed at all those Line Rider videos collected by Cory Arcangel. “For some reason people love to make videos of the line rider guy falling into oblivion. I find these incredibly depressing", Arcangel wrote. I find them really sad too, by the way. I think I'm the only human being on Earth who actually cried after watching that stuff for ten minutes straight, mesmerized and drunk.
I wonder if Bruno saw Jon Haddock's morbidly fascinating series "People Falling -- Imagined and Real," based on photos of people falling from the world trade center. I know how much he loved his "screenshots".
I wonder if Bruno was thinking of Brody Condon et al's 9/11 Survivor on 11/24 2004.
I wonder if Bruno thought he could defy gravity, like Brian Molko in that Placebo videoclip.
I wonder why he stopped playing.
I wonder.
"I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend
You could cut ties with all the lies
That you've been living in
And if you do not want to see me again
I would understand
I would understand
I would understand
Can you put the past away
I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend
I would understand..."
(Third Eye Blind, "Jumper", 1997)
San Francisco, December 2009
Matteo Bittanti
Soundtrack:
"L'amante morte" (La Prima Cosa, Je Te N'Aime Plus, Venus, 2003, lyrics: Bruno Fraschini; performed by Bruno Fraschini and Je Te N'Aime Plus )
"La mia amante morte la mia amante morte
mi sveglia la mattina e mi accompagna a scuola
odio rancore giovane dolore
e il mio cuore fertile da depredare
Si accavalla vita nella terra fertile
vita da consumare sogno da saccheggiare
oh mia amante morte è tempo di giocare
vita che si consuma e muore
La mia amante morte la mia amante morte
mi sveglia la mattina e mi accompagna a scuola
odio stupore giovane fragore
e il mio cuore fertile da depredare
Si accavalla vita nella terra fertile
vita da consumare sogno da saccheggiare
oh mia amante morte è tempo di giocare
vita che si consuma e muore
English Translation:
("Death, my lover, Death, my lover
She wakes me up in the morning and takes me to school
Spite Resentment Young Sorrow
And my fertile heart to prey on
Crosses life in the fertile soil
Life to be consumed/dream to sack
Oh, Death my lover, it is time to play
Life that consumes itself and dies
Death, my lover, Death, my lover
She wakes me up in the morning and takes me to school
Spite Amazement Young Yell
And my fertile heart to prey on
Crosses life in the fertile soil Life to be consumed/dream to sack Oh, Death my lover, it is time to play Life that consumes itself and dies) Background info One major influence on "Bruno" is Brody Condon's installation "Suicide Solution" (2004). The main difference here is that the in-game performance is used to re-enact a real event. It is not, by any means, a parody. A second inspiration for this artwork is Henry Lowood's paper and presentation at Stanford 2009 Avatar conference, "Memento Mori: The Death (or Deletion) of Avatars" (2009). A third inspiration came from Codemasters's decision to create a posthumous, virtual memorial in Colin McRae: DiRT 2 to celebrate Colin McRae who died in September 2007 in a helicopter crash. The memorial represents a unique, and touching, way of preserving Colin's memory in a game space.
