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Minecraft Mausoleum

A Video Game Mausoleum for Bashar al-Assad

Tom Bogaert
004 / 28 February 2013
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Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is known to be a computer geek. He used to be chairman of the 'Syrian Computer Society' and opened up his country to the internet in 2001. In the face of the Arab Spring's general enthusiasm for online tools, Minecraft Mausoleum utilizes 'Minecraft' – an online building game – as context and medium to present a model of a Mausoleum for Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. A first model and rendering of the Mausoleum was presented in Aleppo, Syria in August 2010. The latest version has been produced with the support of Ibraaz and Lesley Heller Gallery.

 

 

How to play Minecraft Mausoleum

Video presentation of Minecraft Mausoleum

 

1.  Go to https://minecraft.net/

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 01
 
 

2. Log in with you own Minecraft username and password or request a temporary username and password from: minecraft.mausoleum@gmail.com

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 02
 

 

3. Click sign in

 

4. Click play in your browser

 

(install/update or allow Java to run - F11 =  full screen on/off)

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 03
 

 

5. Click multiplayer

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 04
 

 

6. Click direct connect

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 05
 

7. Enter server address (move cursor to empty tab and click first).

 

   Copy and paste this IP address:  sc9.servercraft.co:28377

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 06
 

8. Click join server


Don't worry if the 'disconnected by server' message appears: wait 30 seconds and click back to title screen and start again from step 4. Click multiplayer

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 08
 

9. Welcome to Minecraft Mausoleum.

 

Minecraft is a game about breaking and placing blocks. At first, people built structures to protect against nocturnal monsters, but as the game grew, players worked together to create wonderful and imaginative things.

 

It can also be about adventuring with friends or watching the sun rise over a blocky ocean. It's pretty. Brave players battle terrible things in The Nether, which is more scary than pretty. You can also visit a land of mushrooms if it sounds more like your cup of tea.

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 09
 

 

10. You play by using mouse and control buttons – to find out more:  

      

esc = game menu. Also: help helps

 

When in the game, menu click options and then controls  to find out what buttons to use

 

Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 10 game menu
 
 
Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 11 game menu options
 
 
Tom Bogaert Minecraft Mausoleum 12 controls
 

11. When you're finished playing in game menu (esc) click disconnect

 

12. Don't forget to log out!

Tags

Middle East Artist Project Syria New Media

About the artist

Tom Bogaert

Tom Bogaert came to art over a decade ago after practicing refugee law. His artistic practice is organized through long-term research projects that often examine the intersection of humanism and human rights, politics and entertainment, and art and propaganda.

 

Bogaert moved to Amman, Jordan in 2009 and has since produced a series of works under a project called Impression, proche orient, which draws from his experience as a foreigner living and working in the Arab World and uses irony and criticism to interrogate the layers of his own understanding of contemporary issues throughout the region. He is currently working on Voyage, voyage a research-based work that deals with migration and curatorial romanticism through the figure of the strawberry plant-a radicant or meandering plant forever on the move. It will be presented in Casablanca, Morocco at The Ultra Laboratory and Galerie Fatma Jellal in June 2016.

 

http://www.tombogaert.org