After almost 1 year of silence, External Pages has waited with bated breath to launch a recently developed piece by Moustafa Hassan titled Soul Reaper.

Contravening traditional expectations of the term “video essay”, Moustafa engages with two separate mediums - video and text - to subsequently amalgamate them on the browser to reveal new meanings. Using CSS, the two elements interweave and merge by playing with opacity, text transitions and animations. The user’s cursor operates as a magnifying glass as it illuminates the essay’s text and dictates the play/pause attributes of the looping background video.

As described by the artist, Soul Reaper’s video is a “hyper piece” that reframes Moustafa’ artistic influences to recontextualise them as new products of art. In this new space, elements from work by Emma Stern and Tony Cokes are remixed and reproduced. Moustafa comments on the mass cultural outflow of the Y2k era and the ensuing years, where culture is “thrown onto us so fast that everything is a hyperextension of itself”.

The video largely depicts 3D model environments where textures range from various metals, chrome and glass, referencing early Windows XP (also, Microsoft Office 2003 "Luna" theme / Mac OS X "Aqua" user interface) metallic and shiny effects popular within the 2000’s skeuomorphic design trends, as well as the chrome female figure of Maria, the "Maschinenmensch" in Metropolis.

Approaching techno-pessimism, the show critiques the proliferation of capitalism, which engulfs culture and language as experienced through the internet and mass media. As such, Moustafa is concerned with the “breakage of words” used in the essay, its experimental tone and animated, curvilinear movement. Through these gorilla art tactics, Moustafa employs what he defines as “art espionage” to engage with broader critiques of cultural transgression, spatial vulnerability, identity (or lack thereof), the climate crisis, and colonialism.

"Soul Reaper" explores the concept of creating an institution or exhibit envisioning an Indigenous future worldview, challenging conventional historical narratives. By contesting traditional forms of historical authority, it excavates alternative narratives by way of documentary art production. It establishes a virtual institution to pave the way for Indigenous futures, serving as both a manifesto and a monument.

View The Show    Read The Essay