INFINITE MOTHER (IN PROGRESS)
‘Infinite Mother’ is a series of video game film shorts that deconstructs and reconstructs the role of mother in a video game world.
Artist
Pearlyn Lii
Directors
Pearlyn Lii
Alex Darby
Greg Truono
Prashast Thapan
Team
Rena Anakwe (As The Voice Of Insectoid), Alex Darby (Producer and Executive Producer), The Hybrid Studio (Production), Pariah Interactive (Environment Design, Character Development, Animation, Cinematics, Production), nonstudio (Production), Greg Truono (Editor),
Taüs Jafar (Composer & Sound Design), The Hybrid Studio (Post-Production),
Special Thanks to Emma Goldberg Liu, Ying Zhang, Jon-luke Fillippi
︎Collect the series on GemmaArtist
Pearlyn Lii
Directors
Pearlyn Lii
Alex Darby
Greg Truono
Prashast Thapan
Team
Rena Anakwe (As The Voice Of Insectoid), Alex Darby (Producer and Executive Producer), The Hybrid Studio (Production), Pariah Interactive (Environment Design, Character Development, Animation, Cinematics, Production), nonstudio (Production), Greg Truono (Editor),
Taüs Jafar (Composer & Sound Design), The Hybrid Studio (Post-Production),
Special Thanks to Emma Goldberg Liu, Ying Zhang, Jon-luke Fillippi
Installation view of “Pearlyn Lii: Infinite Mother_v1.0” 2023, courtesy of Alan Tansey, New York.
Infinte Mother v1.0 Cutscene
Set in a hellish dreamscape subverting the archetypal shanshui or Chinese rockery, the first cutscene from experimental video game Infinite Mother follows a reconstruction of Lii’s depraved self. Anthropomorphized into an insectoid avatar, Lii takes the viewer on a frenetic journey—in a last-ditch attempt to garner the attention of an emotionally-absent mother who busies herself over-cultivating a garden at the expense of nurturing her children.
Informed by Gaea and viriditas—divine forces of nature—Infinite Mother’s verdant hellscape backdrops a persevering child who is left to contend with the unforgiving forces of Mother Nature in the absence of her mother. Guised as a fever dream, the machinima mourns lost time and the death of filial piety.
The classic beauty of grottos in Chinese mountain-water landscapes is pulled down into an underworld, yet remains elapsing in broad daylight: an irreverence to Lii’s personal cosmology—a conflicting, diasporic battleground for examining the mother wound.
Lii explores mother-daughter relationships by creating new media personas adapted from digital subcultures including video gaming to generate a platform for participants to experience, disentangle, and process intergenerational trauma.
The mother archetype is often layered and loaded with cultural and literary tropes. In these digital worlds, Lii broadens the aperture through which to view the complexities of the mother role and how it plays out in mother-daughter relationships. Lii illuminates the decoupage of chaos and care that jumbles feelings of pain, disappointment, and gratification.
Full series to be completed 2028.
Stills from episode 1.
Concept stills