Catastrophe is an episode from the video game Yuha’s Nightmares currently being developed by Yulia Kozhemyako, an artist featured in the 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art. The game explores the unconscious using 3D graphics.
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The video game Yuha’s Nightmares, which will be released shortly, is a simulation of dreams seen by Yuha, the virtual “I” and recurrent protagonist in the projects of Yulia Kozhemyako (including a web comic, the Instagram account @yuhagirl, zines, a series of in-game photographs and 3D-renders). Yuha walks around naked, has bad habits, and takes part in exhibitions and feminist protests. Her body sometimes looks like a polygonal network and changes texture.
The first episode of the game, Catastrophe, which is presented on Garage Digital, explores the anxious feeling of needing to rush in a dream in order to save oneself from looming disaster. The action takes place in a 2010s apartment block and begin’s in the protagonist’s room. The player in the first-person game explores the space, collects objects to take with them in a limited time, and searches for the exit from the building in order to leave. The gameplay is cyclical: each iteration broadens the location and adds new details. Gradually the dream stops being realistic and becomes filled with strange elements and events.
Working with the technical “underside” of the 3D-world to convey states at the border of dream, reality, and virtual worlds, Kozhemyako uses glitch effects and a gameplay that allows the player to get “stuck” in textures, enter spaces normally closed to them, and see polygonal networks in the place of objects that previously seemed solid. She creates emotionally saturated experiences aimed at self-study and working with one’s complexes, fears, and desires.
An artist and video game developer. Her interests include real-time 3D graphics, Unreal Engine art, and procedural generation. She is a member of IBORG and AAA and runs the 3Dto2D group, which focuses on the aestheticization of the process and defects of production of 3D graphics. She has curated several exhibitions of art games in Moscow and St. Petersburg. She lives and works in St. Petersburg.
