The Rules of the Game

Gustavo Artigas

A Space Main Gallery

April 10 – 26, 2003

Copresented by: Images Festival

The Rules of the Game is part of SOURCE, an exhibition of video, film and new media installations curated by the Field Office and presented by the16th annual Images Festival, April 10-19, 2003 www.imagesfestival.com
Courtesy of Galería Nina Menocal, Mexico City

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The Rules of the Game is a video projection in two interrelated parts: the first component documents activities at a "frontón" ball court built against the Mexican (Tijuana) side of the border with the U.S. The second part presents the "performance" of a sports event in which two Mexican soccer teams and two U.S. basketball teams play against one another simultaneously on the same court. The event speculates on the possibility or impossibility that the teams will discover ways to co-exist, each playing their own game in the same space. Artigas states "Flexibility and an open mind are needed to play the rules that we rewrite daily."

The Rules of the Game was first performed as part of inSITE 2000 at Lázaro Cárdenas high school in Tijuana. It was intended to reflect on the structure of relationships established between the communities of Tijuana/San Diego, articulated through the use of their own games and sports.

Biographies

Born in Mexico City in 1970, Gustavo Artigas has shown extensively throughout Western Europe and has gained notoriety in Mexico through his pirate radio transmissions of messages criticizing home evictions. His previous Canadian experience was a residency at the Banff Center in 1997. In Mexico City he has shown at the Museo Carrillo Gil (1998), Ex-Teresa: Arte Actual (1995) and La Panadería (1994). Artigas lives and works in Mexico City.