This video exemplifies Peggy Ahwesh’s signature strategy of reworking found footage, appropriating fragments from different sources, and recombining them to suggest new meanings. Here Ahwesh intersperses scenes from a Christian religious education film narrating the story of Adam and Eve with clips from films demonstrating virtual reality technology. These clips illustrate the diverse applications of VR, including flight simulation and medical modelling. In juxtaposition with Adam and Eve encountering the wonders of Eden and the eventual knowledge that led to the ‘original sin’, Ahwesh posits that VR might promise a new kind of garden for exploration, with, perhaps, a similar potential for humanity’s downfall.
Peggy Ahwesh (b. 1954, United States) is an experimental filmmaker and digital artist whose work combines narrative and documentary film, and encompasses video performance, Super-8 film, found footage, digital animation, video games, and virtual reality. Ahwesh's playful videos investigate cultural and gender identities, the role of the subject, language, and representation.