'Christ Killa' invites audience to shoot 'homicidal Jesus'

'Christ Killa' invites audience to shoot 'homicidal Jesus'

A Los Angeles artist opened an exhibit this week called "Christ Killa" in which the audience is invited to participate in a video game and shoot hordes of "homicidal Jesus Christs."

Digital and video artist Eric Medine describes his work – a video game linked to projectors and TV monitors – as the "ultimate arbitration between politics and Christianity," notes bloggers Sondra K and Michelle Malkin.

The game landscape "is filled with Googled images of Christian propaganda posters, religious shrines such as St. Peter's in Rome, and clichéd representations of Christ who constantly mumbles messages of tolerance and compassion," says a news release.

"The audience is invited to participate in the carnage by playing the video game and watching short videos of the game in action."

The winner, with the most "Christ kills," will be awarded a trophy.

The exhibit, which began Thursday, runs until May 12 at the Niche.LA Video Art gallery in Los Angeles.

Medine's "artist's statement" on his work declares: "We all perceive the influence of political power in the fluctuations of culture, economics, and technology. The ebb and flow of religion can now be felt on the video game screen."

The artist says he received an undergraduate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996 and a Masters at the Otis School of Art and Design in Los Angeles in 2006. He has shown work in Southern California at the 2005 Los Angeles Juried Exhibition, the Angels Gate Art Center, the Greater L.A. MFA Exhibition in Long Beach and the Walled Cities Gallery in San Pedro.

Explaining further his latest work, Medine said:

Religion, historically associated with spiritual and ethical growth, has recently begun to incorporate the methods of political systems. This new form of religion is praised as leaner, more efficient, more streamlined, but what function does it provide? What happens when you remove the code of ethics, messages of love and community, and compassion from religion in order to implement a political agenda? This new hybrid takes the form of a dazzling distraction, a marketing strategy, aggressive competition, a worldview that divides everything into friend and enemy – all characteristics of modern video games.

Malkin condemned the exhibit, equating it with controversial works protested as religious bigotry, such as photographer Andres Serrano's "gotcha8 Christ," the Brooklyn Art Museum's Virgin Mary painting stained with elephant dung and, most recently, the canceled "Chocolate Jesus" statue slated for exhibit during Holy Week in New York City.