Video games are the territory of the unnatural: the characters' bodies are distorted, graceful women perform unimaginable acrobatic stunts, men scatter crowds of enemies with two-handed swords that exceed their height, and the saviors of the universe handle a knife, a helicopter machine gun, and even a cannon with equal ease. The giant armor of warriors and the attire of girls are equally unnatural, but their image, having been repeated in computer games a thousand times, has long ceased to surprise the audience. Post-disaster worlds abound with mutated animals, irradiated chimeras roam the wastelands, post-Lovecraftian flesh of monsters oozes from dark Gothic vaults. Paths change. Archetypes are distorted. Video games, being part of popular culture, are sensitive to social changes and new trends, sometimes reflecting the changes in a deliberately grotesque way. Obeying this impulse, game developers rewrite history. Thus, women and Ethiopians become commanders of the Roman troops. In games dedicated to the wars of the 20th century, the heroines' hands turn into prostheses, and blue patterns of Celtic warriors appear on men's faces. A technique taken to the point of absurdity, or a mistake not realized by the creator, the grotesque appears in different guises. Its different facets, like the iridescent shell of the jewel beetle, will be considered in three lectures. The manifestation of the grotesque in video games is often associated with the body-horror genre, which appeared in the last quarter of the last century. In search of new sources of horror, the body itself, its unpredictable mutations, was chosen. Epidemics of viruses that escaped from the hermetic spaces of laboratories, the quiet tread of radiation, the distorting influence of dark gods - all lead to terrible, previously unimaginable creatures. The fear of death gave way to the fear of life. The canonical images of the undead — vampires, skeletons and ghosts — repeated many times over the centuries, retreated before science, which denied them. And then the image of pulsating, endlessly changing flesh appeared — primordial horror, which has recently been actively studied by philosophers of speculative realism. The first lecture of the course "Grotesque and Video Games" will consider the origin and mutations of these processes. Lecturer — Evgeny Kuzmichev, art critic, visual culture researcher, co-curator of the "Marginal Design" project, co-founder of the exhibition space "Shame". Games: Resident Evil 2, Darkest Dungeon, Carrion and others. 0:00 The N.A. Nekrasov Library presents the lecture course "Grotesque and Video Games" 0:15 Introduction. Exhibition "Grotesque and Radical Fluidity". 1:57 The first horror films. Dracula. Frankenstein. Werewolf in London. 3:20 Sequels to classic horror films. Exploitation of old plots. Hays Code. 4:50 Films of Hammer Film Productions. 5:35 Grotesque of the flesh. The emergence of new genres in the 1970s. Interest in the body. 7:00 Francis Bacon. "Three Studies for a Crucifixion". Vadim Rokhlin. The Thing (1982). Videodrome (1983). 10:08 Lovecraftian horror. 11:09 Japanese grotesque. Akira (1988). 12:01 Video games. Splatterhouse (1968). Abadox (1989). Fallout (1997). 14:20 Board game Magic The Gathering (1998). 15:56 Resident Evil 2 (1998). Mutations and transformations. 18:20 Saya no uta (2003). Hellgate: London (2007). Fallout 3 (2008). Dead Space (2008). Necromorphic transformations. Terraria (2011). The binding of Isaac (2011). 23:04 Eldritch Horror board game (2013). 23:43 Devil May Cry (2013). Vulnerable body parts. The evil within (2014). 25:32 Rick and Morty (2014). The Cronenbergs. Anchoring body horror in popular culture. 27:22 The grotesque flesh in contemporary art. Jonathan Payne. Andrea Hasler. 29:37 Prototypes of the grotesque. 30:15 Lisa: the joyful (2015). The image of a throne of flesh. Inside (2016). Bloodborne (2015). 34:57 Board game Magic The Gathering (1998). Grotesque flesh and special worlds. The world of Lovecraft. 40:48 Darkest Dungeon (2016). Illogical permanent mutations. Agony (2018). The most boring hell. 46:18 Stranger things (2019). 48:29 The last of us 2 (2020). Zombies and parasitic motives. The Rat King. The Carrion (2020). Reverse horror game. 54:28 Diablo IV. References to early cinema. 56:19 Hans Rudolf Giger (1968). Alien (1979). Necronomicon IV. 1:10:17 Contra (1987). Warhammer 40,000 (1991). Controlled mutations. Existenz (1999). 1:06:00 Scorn. Videodrome (1983). 1:11:17 New Horrors and World War II. Hays Code. Our website: http://nekrasovka.ru/ VK: http://vk.com/nekrasovkalibrary Telegram: https://t.me/nekrasovkalibrary Subscribe to the channel: / @nekrasovkalibrary