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A 3D video environment that can be installed or used as performance tool or video interface, to present video work outside of the cliches that conventional platforms and softwares impose.

Originally, Xilitla is a little village in the Huasteca region of Mexico. Here, in the early 1940s, Sir Edward James – a poet known for his patronage of the surrealist art movement – started the construction of his own idyllic, surrealist pool garden, Las Pozas, in which he deconstructed the many forms and styles of functional architecture.

In this virtual piece, ‘Xilitla’ has been transformed into a hallucinatory, futuristic 3D architectural environment consisting of moving images, laced with polygons and dysfunctional objects. Inside this algorthimic piece, a Janushead is used to navigate Menkman’s digital dreamscape. Taking advantage of the tensions between gameplay and audiovisual art, this aesthetic experiment opens up a new, eerie poetic and fantasmatic universe.

‘Xilitla’ exists as a free downloadable application, released in 2013 by the artist.



An enhanced and expanded edition with three audiovisual video pieces documenting Menkman performing the gameplay was acquired by the Museum of the Image in the Netherlands (MOTI) in 2014.

Xilitla was on display during the Istanbul moving image fair in 2015.

Download Xilitla for MAC || Windows || Linux

︎ Transfer Page ||  ︎ A paper by Kristoffer Gansing.




with special custom controller at @moti