Cryptgame Vol.2

28/08/2024 Cryptgame in Marseille Curated by Jean-Baptiste Janisset Scenography by Olivier Cauet Text by Elora Weill Engerer In her book Artifical Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (Verso, 2012), Claire Bishop examines the status of the artist and the spectator in terms of their active, collective participation in situations. She argues that "the artist is conceived less as an individual producer of discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations [...] while the audience, previously conceived as a 'spectator' or 'observer', is now repositioned as a co-producer or participant." By organizing exhibitions in a former escape game, Jean-Baptiste Janisset embodies this dynamic: the artist becomes less a producer of objects than a facilitator of situations. His role as room master is fuelled by the pleasure and magic of unexpected encounters in a place not intended to house art. So, 26 artists are invited to a flash exhibition where the presence of clues, the desire to level up and avoid epic fail are all stimuli for open-ended and varied storylines. Escape is both the setting and the aim of the game: the relatively confined space of the escape game is supposed to give pleasure through immersion (escape) and through our success in escaping (escape). The fictional setting used to «escape» - to use the term on the cryptgame.fr escape room page - is inspired by popular franchises, in this case the Harry Potter saga. Harry Potter at Philosopher’s Stone, the first novel in J.K. Rowling’s literary saga, was published on June 26, 1997. The same year sees the invention of the term «Weblog» (shortened to «blog» in 1999), the creation of AOL Instant Messenger and the registration of the domain name «google.com». The release of the various Harry Potter volumes coincided with the first web fanbases and fanfictions, which spaced out publication. In other words, the saga owes much of its success to the alternative stories that developed with the rise of blogs and discussion forums. Beyond the author’s initial intentions, expansions, crossovers and reboots show that works can evolve and expand collaboratively, paving the way for a digital and esoteric culture where stories are alive and constantly reinvented by those who love them. We use the expression «the mystery remains» : as if the mystery, even when approached, retains its quasi-moral integrity. There’s a heightened recognition conferred on that which doesn’t reveal itself completely, or that which doesn’t end with a foregone conclusion: the unknown commands respect. At the same time, the fictitious setting of the papier-mâché witch school refers to the limits of collective artistic situations, as pointed out by Claire Bishop: the orchestration of works in an immersive environment creates simulacra and falsity. But artificiality is not intrinsically negative; on the contrary, it can be a strategy for accessing social interactions that would otherwise be difficult to access. That’s what makes sense when you consider that escape games have become the top trend in playful team-building, widely favored by the bosses of La Défense to weld together their teams of suits in anonymous colors. One of the aims of role-play is to take on another costume for the duration of a simulation. Guest list : Alexandre Bavard Léa Bouton Hugo Capron Naïa Combary Raphaël Fabre Charles-Arthur Feuvrier Alison Flora Valentine Gardiennet Margaux Janisset & Maxence Chevreau Camille Juthier Roy Köhnke Bridget Low Fiona Mackay Raphaël Massart Maïlys Moanda Carole Mousset Théo Ouaki Robin Plus Emmanuelle Queinnec Antoine Renard Céleste Richard Zimmermann Caroline Schattling Villeval Victor Vaysse Valentin Vert David Weishaar