Collaborators: Can Altay
Works: Navigating the Game, 2012, Spectator or Player, 2012, Hazard Gallery, 2012, Rogue Game, First Play, 2012, Rogue Game Replay, 2012, The Fastest Getaway, 2012, Genius Cheat Hero, 2012, Split Second Still, 2012, Split Second Still in Blue, 2012
Solo Exhibition: Spike Island, Bristol
Scenes: The Architect; Playing Dead; The Heist.
Dimensions: Each panel 150 x 95cm.
Materials: Vinyl on wall.
Graphic Design: Warren & Mosley with City Edition Studio.
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
Navigating the Game uses the system of gallery text applied as vinyl on the wall to present the solo exhibition Rogue Game at Spike Island structured as three ‘scenes’. Each scene comprises of a short text and a gallery layout presented as a game plan with titles of the works comprising the ‘scene’ annotated. The three scenes introduce the main concepts of the show through a set of imaginary protagonists and events to propose the exhibition space as a walk-through narrative devised as a game. The fiction enlists the architecture of the gallery, the game court and its mediation to set up game time vs. real time vs. imaginary time, to destabilise familiar relations of spectatorship and participation. Within this immersive environment the frivolous illogics of play throws players and spectators into new territories where roles and identities are questioned and exchanged. Architecture and narrative articulates the boundaries between different senses of space and time, between the real and the fictional, the live and the mediated and the event and its image.
The fiction is inspired by Gummo, Harmony Korine, Collected Screenplays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
The scene The Architect introduces the arena of the gallery as the architecture of a game, for navigation by the spectator. These spaces are populated by imaginary characters and protagonists who enact different notions of play that worry at the borders of the sensible. The spectator is invited to inhabit these imaginary roles and consider the terms of the game.
The fiction is inspired by extracts from Gummo in Harmony Korine, Collected Screenplays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
The scene Playing Dead stages a 93-meter open circuit as the street and calls for a different level of engagement and gaming instinct. Frivolous play spills over into deadly play redefining the circuit as a territory for contestation. Central to this scene is the proposition BROKEN CIRCUIT / Playing dead which invites the viewer to stand in for the main protagonist Bunny Boy who wilfully breaks the logic of the circuit. Goal oriented, rule defined action moves into something more abstract and absurd. Known rules are exchanged for new rules where playing dead becomes a measure of the game and winning.
The fiction is inspired by extracts from Gummo in Harmony Korine, Collected Screenplays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
The scene The Heist stages the mediated setting within the exhibition, where two editors in-play process and edit a live feed of footage from the playing arena in the adjacent gallery. As the editors negotiate the technology and stream of imagery that multiplies the event into infinity, so too, our main protagonist Bunny Boy negotiates at gun point the spectacle of the event which threatens to consume the event itself.
The fiction is inspired by extracts from Gummo in Harmony Korine, Collected Screenplays 1 (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).
Dimensions: 500 x 200 x 270cm; light box 161 x 13 x 13cm.
Materials: Black MDF, hinges, vinyl, opal acrylic, fluorescent tube.
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
Entry to the game is via Spectator or Player. One door hinged at the centre of two door openings asks the viewer at the threshold of the show what role they would like to play. This absurdist gesture establishes a game where different modes of spectatorship and participation between the physical and imaginary unfold.
The work makes reference to Duchamp’s Door 11, Rue Larrey where one door serves two entrances defying the French proverb – ‘a door must be either open or shut’.
Collaborators: Can Altay.
Dimensions: Variable according to location; here 1800 x 770 x 900cm.
Materials: Coloured tape, steel, basketball nets, volleyball net, basketball, football, touch rugby ball, volleyball, HDV cameras, players.
Event: Rogue Game First Play was the realisation of our Proposition No.17, developed for the architecture of the Spike Island galleries for a series of events set within a solo show. The proposition states:
‘Seek out an indoor sports hall with markings of at least three different game courts or pitches overlaid. Enlist teams of players for each game. On court assemble the players dressed to indicate team and game. On the whistle, simultaneously all games begin. Each game is played for its official duration.
Characteristics of Rogue Game – playing amongst obstacles / advance and advantage / negotiation / collision / fracturing of order / stalling / stops / starts / feinting / indecision / clashes between balls / swapping of games by players / interruption / rhythm and counter-rhythm / synchronization / syncopation / redundancy / non-accidentals / contra-action / contingent moves – liable but not certain to happen.’
Collaborator: Can Altay.
Dimensions: Dimensions variable according to location, here 1800 x 770 x 430cm.
Materials: Two editing stations (one with Atem mixer), two editors, an occasional commentator, two wall projections, two suspended screens and three tables of Dexion and MDF, chairs, screensaver on editing station and resource table monitors, three TV floor cube monitors, three DVD players, cables, white tape.
Supported by: University of the West of England.
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
Rogue Game Replay creates a setting for spectating Rogue Game First Play, live streamed from the adjacent gallery. During programmed matches a sports commentator gives a running commentary of the action from the live and recorded footage, projected onto suspended screens and walls. Out of match times the schematic moves of players are rehearsed and replayed to infinity as editors negotiate the technology and spectacle of the game. The work stages the mediation of live action of Rogue Game First Play as a game in itself, the two editors becoming players. This articulates the boundaries between live and recorded action and the death of the event to its image.
Dimensions: Circuit dimensions variable according to location, here – 93 metres. Printed pad – 38x27cm.
Materials: White tape to create circuit, proposition as printed text on paper as a tearaway pad, sound.
Event: Broken circuit/ playing dead was the realisation of proposition number 25, developed for the architecture of the Spike Island galleries within the solo show Rogue Game. The circuit within the gallery space doubles up for a circuit of the streets where playing dead is proposed for continuous rehearsal. This used-up sense of play comments on the absurdity of our actions both in and outside the confines of the game.
The work invites the gallery viewer to action. The proposition reads: Mark out a single lane circuit with no start or finish line. Begin running or walking around the circuit at your own speed. At the right time fall down like you are dead. Break the circuit – one half of your body is on the circuit, the other half off. Remain motionless for some time. Get up and complete the lap.
The irregular sound of a gun may trigger your actions.
Exhibited: Rogue Game at Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.
Dimensions: 125 x 13 x 13cm.
Materials: Vinyl, opal acrylic, fluorescent tube.
Exhibited: Spike Island, Bristol, 2012.