This is a Game

By Sara Pergola
24/11/2009

On November, 27, at the Old Police Station, London, the group exhibition "This is a Game" will be launched featuring 14 young artists, designers, and photographers.
The Old Police Station is an artist-run art center located in New Cross, and each last Friday of the month, the non- profit organization holds an event called "Dirty Cop Friday". Every time, the evening program is different, and in November it will host the "This is a Game" collective exhibition in the cells and the new outside containers, while, in the Interview Room, there will be an exciting gig presenting the electro-punk band "Toy toy".
The "This is a Game" exhibition will introduce 14 emergent artists who will play with the intriguing title through their different point of views, media, and materials, revealing different interpretations of the "Game".
Since Aristotle, a game has been intended as a spontaneous activity played only foreseeing itself, without any scope or any result being produced. Therefore, the concept of a game is close to the concepts of happiness and virtue as chosen activities, not necessary like the ones that are constitutive of the work. Immanuel Kant too evidenced the playfulness of aesthetic activity defining production of art "as game without aim".
There are different kinds of games and their characteristic spontaneity can´t be intended as an absolute one. Indeed, every game has rules that delimit its constitutive possibilities, and make it possible for the game to be played.
There are multiple manners to perform and to contextualize a game: for game, play a game, which game are you playing, playing a role, the key of the game, double game, game of fantasy (or imagination), having a good game, having the game in the hand, being in (out of) the game, doing a (good) game, giving a game, entering a game.
Without a context or frame it´s impossible to define the "game", we can bet that a child is serious when it´s playing a game!
We can assume that the message "this is a game" is at the root of what we can call conscious involvement, in which the frame is at the same time perceived and not perceived. This conscious involvement, in turn, might have originated from the child´s capacity to remain alone in the presence of the mother, in a relation in which the illusory aspect that the child is subjected to, plays a decisive role in the process of learning and becoming autonomous, which, in its turn, is characterized by the ability to create and move through contexts. Through the different interpretations and art practice solutions, the exhibition will offer multiple reading of "this is a game" with different "framings" given by each artist´s points of view. As Gregory Bateson said in its metalogues: "Life is like a game whose aim it is to discover the rules; rules always change and can never be discovered".
Curator: Sara Pergola
Participating Artists: Alex Tsoucas, Becky Redman, Brian Mcdermott, Doireann Ni Ghrioghair, Eleftherios Fitsiolos, Jan Leung Kwai Chun, Jessica Minor, K Yoshino, Konstantin Kochkin, Maddalena Dottori, Mauricio Pàez, Michela Volpe, Paul Deadlifox, Stuart Kay.
Opening: November, 27, 2009, at 7.00 to 12.00
Opening hours: Saturday, 28 and Sunday, 29, 12 am - 18.00 pm
Address: Old Police Station, 114-116 Amersham Vale, London SE14 6LG
Contact: Sara Pergola, tel: 077 58789618