Virtual Parasite: Songs of Escape

Transcription of the video essay by Henrique Palmeirim for Virtual Parasite: Songs of Escape, Guilherme Figueiredo’s first solo exhibition. As soon as the streamer goes for a break and leaves the room, we gain access to the video game character’s thoughts and inner dialogues referencing the relationship with its surroundings and its own body: -Just missing… purpose. -What am i doing this for? -HMMI -I mean, I’m constantly working and working and have barely time to just… uh-exist -hmm- It’s just like I’m -uh- (I really need a wee) -Just like I’m in constant autopilot. Every time I come back to myself and realize the life that I’m missing — it just doesn’t last long. I-I end up getting back to the same patterns and behaviours. It’s as if I-I was a-a shell, possessed by a short sighted -like- dopamine hit. Like I’m the host to a parasite, that is my role, destined to indefinitely forget about my choices and needs. -I don’t even feel like myself. -I see my body, but it’s just a nimble representation of what I am or… want to become. -A simple representation. -Like the ones in a simulation or a game. Simple, digestible, easy to control. -An escape to a world isolated from a difficult reality. -That’s what I am. I am li-like an image of myself. -I imagine that in these moments of alienation, I’m just being controlled by someone else. It could be through -like- psychic magic powers or… a maggot lodged in my skull eating away at my brain. -heh -Nah, nah, no, no -HH- no, no! -A chip in my brain and they’d move me like those remote control cars. heheh -HMM- that would be somethin’ -Or it could be a piece of writing and I’m being read by a stranger or-or, just a thought in their mind. -Um- in any case, would they understand what they’d be doing? As in, they’d be controlling my every move. And I do need to have a choice. But given choice, would I be able to find purpose without them? Also, would they exist while they were not existing through me? I mean, may-maybe for them to live this life, it would have to be through me. Without me, this life wouldn’t be this one. I guess. PFFT -Ugh. Tsk -I dunno, on the one hand, I could try to release myself from the control of this parasite. Streamer - You’ve been here the whole time? -On the other, I couldn’t try to exist with it. Like a symbiosis or something like that-oh-oh-oh I know! I-I could just- Streamer - That’s crazy…