In Homo Ludens (1938) the psychologist Johan Huizinge proposed that games are not distinct from work, that they percolate through daily life. This, then, places us all in a great big arena in which a multitude of games are being played out, overlapping and interfering. In fact, politics, economies and cultures could be described as the outcome of negotiations between different rules of conduct, which is why they are contingent and never wholly satisfactory.

This might be one analogy drawn from Gustavo Artigas’s The Rules of the Game II (2000–1), an event which took place in the Tijuana neighbourhood of La Libertad, a crossing point for many illegal immigrants entering the United States, as part of ‘InSite 2000’. Two football teams and two basketball teams from local US and Mexican high schools were invited to play simultaneously on the same court, so not only did each team encounter the usual adversary, but each game was pitched against the other, vying for space. Previously, in The Rules of the Game I (2000–1), Artigas built a handball court with the wall on which the ball is bounced placed right on the Tijuana/San Diego border, creating a particularly tense ‘can we have our ball back please’ situation. Although these represented antagonistic conditions that could be analogous to many situations, this vicinity of a political and geographic boundary steep the piece in immigration issues – essentially the accommodation of the other.





This, however, would be a one-dimensional reading of Artigas’s concerns. In 2001 he was invited to take part in ‘The End of the Eclipse’, a show of Latin-American artists curated by Spanish philosopher José Jiminez at the Fundación Telefonica in Madrid. Artigas’s proposal was a conference at the opening on the subject of artistic identity evaluated from the viewpoint of national identity. Someone who looked and dressed like Artigas took the stand and began speaking on the subject of identity and multiple personality disorder. They then stood down and the speech was continued by another Artigas look-alike – there were five incarnations in all. Artigas talks about the event, DUPLEX, not in the socio-political terms that such a conference would normally dictate, but as an autonomous artwork:

‘The readings made from the work will be discussions on its elements, but my basic problem as an artist, above all else, is to make art...The commentary on the piece was, to say the least, ironic as to this type of classification concept, without ceasing to be a piece. It is curious to think of it as a series of portraits or as a possible multiple portrait.’

So instead of considering conflict as a subject matter, Artigas uses it as a medium in and of itself. He often creates a contestant out of an observer, confounds an expectation or sets up a perverse situation that seems almost heinous. In September he is staging the event Opening in Galeria O, Mexico City, where two gallery spaces are divided by a long wall. Ten American football players will be divided into two teams, one each side of the wall, and, egged on by cheerleaders, they will throw themselves at the wall until it is destroyed. This has obvious connotations of market competition, categorical separation, the desperation of the struggling artist and so on, but the dynamics of the players themselves will also have their own athletic aesthetics, and a savagery which will be beyond the artist’s control.

It seems important that Artigas works with the lexicon of leisure, often construed as a yardstick of wealth or class. There is a tradition of Mexican artists working in this way – Gabriel Orozco’s ping-pong table and Damián Ortega’s house constructed from tortillas, for instance. Yet what seems different here is Artigas’s reliance on participation in a real, contingent way, which is then translated into a mediated gallery presentation – action and evidence are never confused, but held separately as if two very distinct parts of a project.

In Geeta vs. Sage (2001) two female striptease artists were pitched against one another in a mud-wrestling match at the Roxy Rhythm Bar in Melville, Johannesburg. The final gallery presentation comprised a ceramic piece – made by firing the muddy fall-out of the wrestling – and the women’s embroidered robes, as well as photographs and video of the wrestling match. Again, the live context might provide a socio-political situation within which the piece ‘comments’, but there is an undoubtedly internal, formal logic too. Artigas considers the documentation as ‘a kind of second life of the idea’.





Many art writers refer to Nicholas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998) in which he identifies history or the social sphere as simply another medium to be manipulated by artists, like DJs mixing samples. Artigas concurs with this approach to some extent: ‘I still think in a very aesthetic way so composition, measures, layers, rhythm and balance are still related to the works. The difference is the elements I have decided to work with: social dynamics.’ However, in contrast to the frightfully liberal and often flaccid events proffered elsewhere – noodle bakes, community cinemas, aimless publications and so on, situations in which the ‘participant’ is little more than a dispassionate cog in prescribed social machinery – Artigas combines this with good, old-fashioned spectacle. Although the original event has a serious, critical approach, it is more often than not tinged with irony. The form, on the other hand – the spectacle of games or disaster – opens up space for real, unmediated reaction. Artigas is taking advantage of our empathy in a device that creates ‘random possibilities in the work. In this way the action or the event has a temperature.’

Besides the obvious titillation of female mud wrestlers, Artigas has courted controversy by using members of other groups considered marginal. For instance, as part of the performance programme ‘La Amistad’ he orchestrated Domino Effect (2000), a domino knockout tournament between four female prostitutes and four Cuban artists. Whenever a player lost a point they had to drink a shot of rum; they were eliminated from the tournament when they could drink no more. The winner received a bottle of rum. Here Artigas flags up many issues connected with ‘tolerance’ in an almost facetious manner, refreshing in the earnest atmosphere of the international expo. These levels of antagonism and dysfunction, though, are more than appropriate to political discourse – games have always been a way of rehearsing future conflicts with all the effects of methodology, but without too much at stake.

It seems important that Artigas’s projects often take place at international events, in the social spaces just beyond institutional control. There was one occasion, however, when he did work with a museum – Emergency Exit (2002) at the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City. A stunt motorcyclist drove into the museum lobby and exited by crashing through a wall. You can attach to that all the event theory you like, but from here it smells of copper-bottomed iconoclasm.

Some might complain that Artigas’s mischief is too outrageous, but then he is referencing risk in many ways; the work would fall short if it was not risqué itself. In On The Air (2000), at the 7th Havana Biennial, participants were given a model aeroplane and a portable radio (after having left ID at the desk as a deposit); they tuned in to 90.1FM and listened to a pirate transmission of black-box recordings recovered from plane crashes as they flew the model planes. Of course, this seems sicker since 9/11, but besides these implications it is still fundamentally cynical, like an experiential vanitas painting. But maybe cynical is the wrong word; perhaps Artigas is an arch realist. His evocation of disaster and risk dissolves the often hermetic realms of games and art, investing them with the mercurial essence of real life drama.

Sally O’Reilly is a writer and critic, and Trivia Editor for contemporary