"STRANGE GAMES" ("TROUBLES JEUX")

Fondation Bullukian / 18 September 2007

A banquet imagined and overseen by Elie During, philosopher and teacher at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Lyon and the Ecole d'Art in Annecy.

With:
Laurent Jeanpierre,
lecturer in political science at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Strasbourg
Christophe Kihm,
art critic, editor in chief  “art press”
Patrice Maniglier,
philosopher, Ecole Normale Supérieure and Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Montpellier
Joseph Mouton,
writer, teacher of aesthetics at the Villa Arson, Nice

All the Biennial "players" will be present

What role and what meaning should be accorded the game paradigm and the player as personality in contemporary art – especially the contemporary art of the present decade? And why go to so much trouble if the Game turns out to be a category as dense as that of Entertainment?
One suspects the playful stance of being a way of eluding the critical issues in art, and so of perpetuating a consensus which ultimately leaves room for everybody: for the cheater/trickster whose cynicism passes as an instinct for play, for the gadfly who no longer upsets anybody, and so on.
Our mistrust is justified: the game, as a symbol of the art world, is maybe just too helpful all round. And if everyone agrees either to play the game or denounce the system, it's still the Game that wins, even before play gets under way.   
But what kind of game are we talking about in fact? What are the roles of – to adopt Roger Caillois' categories – competition, chance, simulation and vertigo? What notions of rules, constraints and limitations ultimately take shape? A cooperative game or a zero-sum one? Chess or go? A real game or just messing around? A game of skill? A knockdown game? In the end you have to make your choice and make your play.
So let's imagine a sort of verbal joust in a pleasant garden, with each player taking his/her chances: a banquet, in the Platonic sense. On the fringe of the Biennial's experimental snakes and ladders game, the invitees – five thinkers/participants from the art field plus all the assembled "players" – will catch our questions on the rebound or come up with others: a way of thwarting the somewhat dubious sway of the fun metaphor so as to leave a little play in the game.

Elie During