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Thibault Brunet, Vice City, 03-01-2012, 19h10, 2012, Colour print, passe-partout, 20 × 20 cm, © the artist, courtesy galerie binôme, Paris pP. 88 / 89
via Daguerreotypie and these refinements are mirrored in the writings of the author when he pleases himself with stylish formulations, and then settles on the same level as the very precise but probably unreal arrangements of dig ital artists when working on similar architectural details. The artists in distURBANces carry on these playful traditions, in particular when one considers that the aesthetics of their artistic production are as con ventional as the works of, say, Surrealism. Whereas the very precise drawings and paintings of the Surrealist artists referred to the anxieties present be tween the two World Wars, the games found in this exhibition’s works refer to a level beyond: the very complex activities of today’s financial markets, which can only be grasped if you understand strategic game theory (which happens to be described with great precision by Hermut Rosa as a result of a continuous acceleration quite similar to the levels of First Person Shooter games). In these games, space becomes the key element for success and de feat, something suggested the very title of distURBANces. The ground is even most of the time, making it difficult to move around because of the missing depth of field; rooms are confined, making escape difficult; the night (or dawn) is always ever-present, which makes it equally difficult to be precise about your position and place because it can be the exact opposite when the sun blazes brightly . . . but this seems to be the rule for this kind of game. The game not only crosses the borders of artistic media but those of social or eco nomic realities as well, and confirms one of Paul Virilio’s claims that the bor ders of the city of the future will no longer be defined by horizontal but rath er vertical limits. What’s more, according to Virilio, they won’t have walls either and will be constantly overlit. Even if every artist’s work in this exhibition has its own character, they all fit into this common scheme: they all are expres sions in the artist’s mind of a greater economic crisis and even came to exist ence under its immediate effect. Every game is a model of harsher realities, from chess, which was invent ed in India, to the military simulations of John Horton Conway’s Game of Life as a basis for cell multiplication. And since Johan Huizinga’s 1938 book Homo Ludens (Playing Man) the game is even part of (post)modern phi losophy. Playfulness has always had its part in art, at the very latest since Mar cel Duchamp’s symbolic action of shifting levels of perception and reality with his ready-mades. None of the artists in distURBANces can do without playing with the concept of perception; this is true of Delangle’s strict analogue pic tures taken at an otherwise indefinable moment in the night; it is also true for González and his architectural constructions shot by daylight. In similar fash ion as has become common in the finance industry, both artists play with com puters that do all or half of the work; they aspire to be physically present when the work is shown and are, in the end, the producers who try to find happi ness by re-introducing the game into their own lives and realities. What bet ter place than the country and city of Luxembourg to exhibit these pictures! Rolf Sachsse, *1949, Bonn, Germany, is an author, curator and art historian who is Professor in Design History and Media Theory at the University of Fine Arts, Saarbrücken. He lives in Saarbrücken and Bonn. Translated from German by Pierre Stiwer & Joan Barbara Travers Simon
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