Rodrigo Azaola
Impunity landscapes IV, Microtransactions
2023
Single-channel HD video with sound. 1’ 50’’.
Impunity Landscapes IV explores the crossroads of financial flows between off-shore wealth anonymization strategies and cryptocurrency microtransactions conducted across massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Both flows occur in liminal spaces, in which the notion of territoriality gets dissolved and national jurisdictions become redundant.
An unsettling panorama arises in which the notion of territory is stretched algorithmically and legally in an infinite manner. Names of shell companies, extracted from leaked financial databases, playfully evoke land acquisition and gaming lore, interwoven with gaming virtual environments that allow synthetic monetary flows.
Impunity Landscapes IV is a chip-tuned side-note about wealth deployed across real and territoryless jurisdictions.
This work was exhibited at MoneyLab#13, 3 November–1 December 2023, NeMe Arts Centre, Limassol, Cyprus; Kaugummi im Motherboard. Gr_und, Berlin. December 2024.