Personal Cinema

Personal Cinema is a collaborative initiative of a group of artists that formed out of the necessity to address some particular problems associated with the production, exhibition and distribution of works of new media. Personal Cinema co-operates with other social and artistic groups which share the same concerns, and which are likewise dedicated to opening a visible space for debate on social, cultural and political issues.
Their most recent project in progress, The Making of the Balkan Wars: The Game (title bold) which is presented in this exhibition resulted from discussions about the reality (or virtual reality) presented through official narratives and entertainment, about war games and epic strategy video games, and their systems of control and distribution. In a desperate search for the creation of local heroes and imagined zones of conflict, the creators of these highly realistic virtual games, very often present a simplified interpretation of human history and culture, one that in no way adequately describes the experiences of the people who are caught within actual war games. In the live real-time/real-war videos of CNN and in video games, this simplification of culture and history is itself a form of violence. The Making of Balkan Wars project uses the formal characteristics of the epic adventure video game to critique the real historical game that transpires on the plane of geopolitics and everyday life. The idea of the project is to create a game-like platform based on real time historical facts in which the chosen storyboard territory is the Balkan Peninsula, a hotbed of conflict on the European continent, an area marked by religious, political, social and economic difference and fragmentation. While virtual battle scenes are celebrated for their extreme realism, contemporary warfare has begun to resemble science fiction. The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game, is intended to counteract the sensational spectacle of war as presented by the media by deconstructing stereotypes, focusing on the distortion of identities and revising the dominant logic of explanation of events in this region.

So, what are we playing at?, by Karin Ohlenschläger, MediaLabMadrid

Play, a verb that implies openness, curiosity and the wish to explore, to relate to things, to situations, and to others. Play is a means of constructing the subject and creating a space for freedom between the predetermined and the unpredictable. Play is a way of experiencing and positioning oneself within a constellation of possible worlds. As conceived of by twentieth century art, from Dada, through Surrealism, Fluxus or Situationism, play has also been a means of questioning and transcending order. A way of investigating and becoming aware of different patterns of thought and behaviour in order to deconstruct them, transform them and produce new relationships and behaviours.
Steering between the predictable and the unpredictable, between order and randomness is an individual and collective means of evolving and progressing. A game makes sense through action: by travelling along the path rather than by reaching the goal.

Recuperating the essence of the game as a tool for acquiring experience and free thinking – as formulated by H. Marcuse or G. Debord - is an arduous task when the leisure industry has been transforming games into nothing more than consumer products, trivialised for the purposes of entertainment. Nowadays, the world of the game, and particularly the videogame, is subject to the dictates of a market that fuels an image of the unsatisfied consumer. Thus, the game ceases to be a tool and becomes a product. The player is reduced to being an operator whose field of action is subordinated to binary patterns of behaviour between good and bad, black and white, winners and losers.

One of the challenges and aims of The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game is to recuperate the essence of the game as a tool for communication, as a modus operandi for approaching and exploring the complexity of the world around us. The rules of this game deal with the problems of coexistence among peoples with different cultures, beliefs and ideologies. It is a game that allows us to stand, virtually, in someone else’s shoes, to experience different ways of conceiving, perceiving and relating to diverse situations and environments.

The Making of Balkan Wars is located at the junction of many cultures, religions and beliefs, in a zone of confrontational politics masterminded from a distance by a host of economic, social and cultural interests that extend beyond borders and place us at the epicentre of a global conflict.
Almost three decades ago, S. Marchán said that the ludic space in art only made sense if it could mediate between real life and the ideal. This project by the collective Personal Cinema, attempts to recuperate this sublime form of the game as a bridge between the real and the possible. It encourages each one of the players to become aware, to experience and to place themselves within a space open to reflection and communication. The recuperation of memory and the rethinking of history to redirect a conflict towards new paths for dialogue and coexistence is the objective of a game whose rules transcend mere virtuality.

This is an excerpt of the text; the complete text can be found at
http://www.balkanwars.net/KarinOhlenschlager.htm

www.personalcinema.org
www.balkanwars.net

For credits and more information about Personal Cinema click here to go to the biography section