Continuing his exploration of the new icons offered up by consumer society, Yan Duyvendak, in military fatigues, armed with a machine gun, is the incarnation of a character from a video game. Mixing different levels of reality, he passes imperceptibly from the role of the player to that of the soldier on the screen, only to finish as a real soldier. When the words of the player in front of the video console become those of a soldier seized with panic on the field of battle, when the images of the game are enacted by Private Duyvendak as a military reality, when the language of computers crosses with the barked commands of battle, a nauseating dizziness results. Questioning the link between the representation of violence and violence itself, the artist denounces in one gesture the unbearable lightness of war games and the all-too-real terror that inspires them.
Translation : Wesley Clark
Performance : Yan Duyvendak
Direction : Imanol Atorrasagasti
In collaboration with : Nicole Borgeat
Coproduction : Centre pour lImage Contemporaine (sgg*) Saint-Gervais, Genève ; Fonds Régional dArt Contemporain dAlsace Selestat ;Fonds Cantonal dArt Contemporain Genève (FCAC) ; namics Sankt-Gallen