ABC- Wednesday 11/2/2004

 The Caja Suiza del Conde Duque was transformed yesterday to a virtual shopping mall of the Balkans. In a intergrated war zone the visitors were transformed to participators in a unique three dimensional video game

 MADRID. Reality and fiction- where do the borders between the two worlds lie? Although war video games present combat zones, heroes of the media and disintegrating societies, they often interpret history in a simplistic manner.

In order to approach this new interpretation, or even better in order for each player to reach his own conclusions, Personal Cinema have created a multi-disciplinary project based on war video games based on geopolitics and strategy: “The making of the Balkan War: The Game”.

Since yesterday, this exhibition (co-organised by the Greek Ministry of Culture and the Cultural Olympiad 2004) has transformed the Caja Suiza del Conde Duque in spacious virtual scenery in which visitors can play the roles of interactive explorers. This was confirmed by the participation of the managing director of the Cultural Heritage of Spain, Juan José Echeverría, the director of Conde Duque, Juan Carrete, the co-director of Media Lab Madrid, Karin Ohlenschlager, the curator Nina Vagic and the co-ordinator and founder of Personal Cinema, Ilias Marmaras.

This initiative, part of the “Hola Grecia!” program that belongs to Arco 04 uses typical characteristics of epic strategy video games aiming to the objective to criticize religious, social and political conflicts dominant in the region of the Balkans and furthermore to find new forms of dialogue.

In times of “preventive war” actions, Personal Cinema claims that this project is the first preventive “artistic war.” From perspectives often humoristic or irreverent, 50 artists from 17 countries make an effort to develop dialogue and tolerance between people, but also to create a network of artistic interaction.

The visitor that arrives for the first time in this innovative installation at the two floors of Caja Suiza will be offered a manual, while two guides will provide specific information during the visitors walk, if it is considered necessary.

The starting point is on the ground flour, were the visitors can watch all the videos of the participating artists on screens and can download the game using two computers.

On the second floor, there is a specific venue, which invites us to play on the right and the left side of the room with a simple medium, a joystick. In this room, there is the possibility to play in real time with other players and choose in another screen the videos of the participating artists. The presentation continues with three billboards, which convey public messages that denounce the emotions that the images of war create.

Finally, eight positions connected with the Internet allow each user to choose a player (avatar). After choosing three characteristic words from the Balkans, the player will enter the 20 rooms of the Balkan shopping mall (a zoo, a club, a jail, a factory etc).

This virtual venue contains videos, sounds, images, and texts related to the concept of the game. The main concept is to maintain the balance between balkanization and de- balkanization.

Each player can interact with the other participants either through shooting or by throwing various objects. Moreover, the players can converse between them on how to plan common strategies using the chat-room of the game.

In this manner, the aesthetics of the video game are fully exploited in order to create an artistic metaphor about the reality of the Balkans in a less warlike manner to a more conversational one (www.balkanwars.net).

This artistic team organizes projects and events that aim to critical minds and focus on problems relating to local territorial issues.

Additionally, they work on development of public mediums, which will allow minority groups to express and represent themselves.

Apart form participating in events of established or well known institutions they have organized the “Video Show” in 1999. In this exhibition a collective group of contemporary video artists showed a selection of video art in the windows of electric appliances shops in the center of Athens.

“Glimpses” 2001was a web project proposed to various artists from Europe in order to comment on the events of September 11.