"Want it, get it, fake it! the lost level"
Duration: three hours, 2007
Performed December 12th, 2007
Exhibition: Art for rent, Dubai, UAE.
Curator: Sam Bardaouil
A year ago I started a concept creating a video game where young and mature artists can play in order to become artist super heros. It is a sort of training field and only who wins the game becomes the ultimate artist super hero... a person with special powers who will save the world from misery, hate, missunderstandings, lies and tragedy... The only problem is that this game cannot be won. It is endless and it ends up playing you insted of you playing it. The artist finds himself in a viscious circle where his strength and conentration are constantly being tested and he/she can only last that much... after the strength weakens and after the artist has now power left... he/she stops playing the game and hence... fails. I have been on "tour" with this performance/video game for some time and have performed in several countries... only to lose every time. This is a game that tends to put into evidence the frustration of the artists in front of a complicated and at times corrupt art system, where galleries and museums, curators and art critics become a villain and a barrier rather than a helper towards the fullfillment of the artists destiny.
This time, in Dubai, I will play one of the lost levels, that have never been played before a sort of lost level or bonus level that has never been achieved before... during the play of "want it, get it, fke it!" in the past year.
It is a sort of further development of the concept that focuses on one specific level instead of spreading out into seven different ones as it did in the first original version of the game. In Dubai the goal of the game will be to rent the artist, sell emotions for something they are not in reality. Demonstrate affection despite of the fact that the video is showing propaganda for lies and despite the fact that the video is based on the destruction of a city (Sarajevo). Images of Sarajevo will be covered up with 2D animation texts which invite the player to fake emotions, be ruthless and despise a lot...
I will be standing on the wooden platform in front of the video projection and will assume different positions. all of them will recall a specific military and folcloristic/ ritualistic position people would assume in Sarajevo. These positions will be interruped at times... but rarely, as I invite people from the public to come up to me on the platform and exchange love and tenderness with me through a hug... the duration of the hug will be determined by the person that is being hugged and by me. All this will be happening in front of the video of a destroyed city.