Class War: The Game: The Movie. By Scott Lenney
Between playful graffiti on the walls of the Sorbonne and long denunciations of the spectacle lies the enigma that is Guy Debord's Game of War. Veteran gamer Scott Lenney played a match with Class Wargames at their Summer Offensive, enjoyed it thoroughly but wondered at the aim of the game. "Taking up Guy Debord's Game of War, Class Wargames (comprised of author Richard Barbrook, psychogeographer Fabian Thompsett, artist Alex Veness and curator/film-maker Ilze Black, among others) have attempted a return to games as social events. Assisting in the task was a presentation at the HTTP Gallery late last September of ‘xenographs' and cinema dealing with the concepts and experience of the game, and demonstrating Debord's belief that Game of War in fact represents ‘a guide to how people should live their lives within Fordist society', and that, by playing it, ‘revolutionary activists ... learn how to fight and win against the oppressors of spectacular society.'1 While Debord came to regard the game as among his most important work, its relevance to class war is obscure: the set rules of operation, numerically equal opposing sides and arithmetical system of engagement do not seem to resemble, say, a wildcat strike, a picket or a demonstration in any way. The Game of War - like the more popular Risk - takes Napoleonic war as its model, not May '68. http://www.metamute.org/en/content/class_war_the_game_the_movie Review of Class Wargames - The Game of War Weekend - held at Furtherfield's HTTP Gallery http://www.http.uk.net/events/gameofwar _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
