Eliza Abejo

Bachelor of Contemporary Art
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Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game’ is a project that manifested after Eliza watched Boots Riley’s film, ‘Sorry to Bother You.’ Starring LaKeith Stanfield, the 2018 film is about a black-American telemarketer named Cassius Green who puts on a ‘white voice’ to succeed in his career. Critiquing racist and capitalist ideologies, Cassius prolongs the inequality in his community by selfishly exchanging for a life lived ‘worry-free.’ After watching it, Eliza could not help but wonder what could have happened to Cassius and his relationship with others had made different choices at earlier points of the film.

Combining her love for storytelling and videogames, Eliza aims to address the relationship between power and agency through a visual novel game. Rather than passively experiencing Cassius’ moral dilemmas, Eliza wants her game to confront players with Cassius' moral dilemmas. While players are free to change Cassius' ending, this still begs the question as to whether we do have the power to break out of the ideologies we live under. The game, after all, is very forgiving of where mistakes are made. Life itself is another matter entirely.

If the game is the final result, this is the first iteration: a site-specific installation that looks into how we alter our voices to appeal to others. In essence, we follow a script. Here, Eliza challenges others to take the first step of social change: to see where edits should be made so others learn to accept our true selves.

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