So Good to Feel Real
The Cool Couple

As part of MaltaBiennale '26, Clean / Clear / Cut, directed by Rosa Martinez, Fondazione Oelle Mediterraneo Antico presents the Thematic Pavilion So Good to Feel Real by The Cool Couple, curated by Francesca Guerisoli. Set up at the Antica Armeria dei Cavalieri in Birgu, the installation develops a critical reflection on the relationship between images, technology, and the representation of violence in contemporary culture.

So Good to Feel Real is a multimedia installation composed of a group of sculptural works, an audio monologue, and a network of laser beams that reflects on how digital cultures transform violence into a playful, aestheticized, and consumable spectacle. The sculptures reimagine iconic firearms through the seductive and colorful visual language of video games and toy design. Lethal objects thus take on playful and seemingly innocuous forms, revealing how digital media—particularly video games and social media—neutralize the gravity of conflict, converting it into entertainment and visual merchandise. A monologue spread throughout the space opens onto a dystopian scenario of a near future, in which the boundaries between virtual and real, internal and external, cognitive processes and computer computation collapse until they coincide. In this ambiguous space, human experience merges with the technological interface, while the very perception of reality becomes unstable. The immersive laser system designs the environment, tracing dynamic trajectories that evoke GPS routes, video game interfaces, ballistic lines, and digital maps. Reflections and luminous fragmentations construct fractured visual narratives, similar to the discontinuous flows of the online world. Light thus becomes a narrative tool: simultaneously a symbol of military precision and a metaphor for the dispersion of truth in the post-truth era.

In this hybrid landscape, war transforms into a consumable image, into flowing content, into a spectacle. The installation questions our growing desensitization to real suffering, interrogating the passivity with which we witness the transformation of conflict into aesthetic experience.

The title, So Good to Feel Real, alludes to the progressive blurring of the line between reality and simulation, in a media ecosystem where traumatic events are repackaged as memes, livestreams, and relatable content. Platforms like Fortnite, TikTok, and Instagram contribute to an increasingly filtered and spectacularized perception of the world, where even violence can take on the codes of lifestyle.