Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai Machinima workshop at PREM Intern School Chiang Mai

Invited for a residency by Art Residency Thailand in Chiang Mai in the end of August, I had the chance to stay in a very lovely place the Country retreat resort in the middle of the rice fields so nicely welcomed by Alex Soulsby and the team of PREM, an international highschool. I stayed 10 days there and really enjoyed my time there.

I gave two machinima workshops, first to the grade 5 and had a wonderful time with all the students, who were very enthusiastic with the project and loved to play the independent games I provided to them. For this workshop I offered sub drives with a huge selection of indie, experimental games to the participants with at least ten of the indie games I found during my stay in Seoul, in Taïwan, as well as in Indonesia. The main directive that was given to them was to think about what they felt when they were playing these video games, what were their emotions related to these virtual worlds?

Then I also had the pleasure to give an other workshop to the theater and visual arts options of the Grade 11. First, some of them were a bit sceptical about the idea of playing to video games in the frame of an high school but some of them really understood the project. On the huge selection of indie games I provided, Coffee Talk the game created by Fahmi Hesni at Toge Productions made a big hit, followed by the Fire Mountain of Mojiken Studio.The project we proposed was to make a self portrait by using independent games as a medium of expression in order to deal also with the concept of identity.

I also had the time to create and spent some marvellous moments inside the museum of the organic farm of PREM, thinking about some discussions I had with Thaï artists around the concept of cryptocolonialism. I was amazed by the bamboo patterns of the museum farm and created this short video.

Cryptocolonialism from isabelle arvers on Vimeo.