The Plastic Garden

Evoking imagery and memories of the atomic age, THE PLASTIC GARDEN summons the ghost of a forgotten future, the grim fatality of a total nuclear war that held the world hostage half a century ago. A nuclear war, once a tangible inevitability felt by many, has seemingly slipped into oblivion in recent times. Despite going out of fashion as a symbol for the socio-political imaginary, the nuclear drama, like a malicious return of the repressed, continues to haunt the contemporary world in various forms, with the recent North Korean threat as one of the latest episodes.
　　Hacking and appropriating the popular video game CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS (2010), THE PLASTIC GARDEN revisited the dark vision and symbolism of the nuclear drama that seems on the one hand remotely archaic, but hauntingly close and familiar on the other. The restaged scenes, devoid of bloody shootouts, are equally if not more lethal and violent than in the original game. THE PLASTIC GARDEN unravels a forgotten future that felt like an endless nightmare spinning loose, or else a collective death wish that comes to define the tragic essence of modern socio-political reality.