Capital sympathie

In this solo exhibition, Capital Sympathy, Renaud Héléna presents a range of recent works inspired by game theory and communication techniques. The artist designs game mechanisms as artistic protocols intended to create a collective fiction that will be told differently each time. The aim is to conceive of multiple narratives that will be constructed as players engage, choose between attack and defence, and react to their opponents’ strategies.

Game theory is a mathematical tool for analysing strategic interactions between individuals, such as cooperative or offensive behaviour. It provides a theoretical framework for fields as varied as economics, business management and diplomacy. It is based on mathematical games which, through scenarios such as the prisoner’s dilemma, confront players with choices — keep or share — in order to obtain the best reward. The assessment of the probabilities of human choices in terms of individual profit has since been criticised by new generations of theorists.

Untitled (deal) is a concrete interpretation of these games, but instead of points or any other form of reward, Renaud chose words as the currency of exchange. Two players, who are not allowed to speak, can sit down and bet on each other’s generosity in order to obtain more words and perhaps manage to communicate. The game offers new ways of sharing through constraint, but also a liberation of speech from rational control, redefining social interactions by questioning the notions of failure, success and reciprocity. It is not about winning money, competition or the vanity of a reward, but about a project of co-construction, relationships of trust, care and responsibility around works that have become social objects.

Cut-out texts and occasional drawings set the scene for the game. This writing and drawing project explores the world of personal development and communication coaching, with texts blending private and professional life, personal testimonials and disembodied discourse. Using the technique of cutting, the artist transforms and recomposes the texts, similar to the cut-up technique, in an attempt to free writing from consciousness. The artist plays with the emptiness of words and their absence. In our Western neoliberal culture, words of personal development, personal words, corporate words, everything is mixed together in a process of inscribing the experience of authenticity.

The installation unfolds in several layers of cut-out surfaces and texts, reorganising them like puzzle pieces that extend into both physical and mental space. The artist uses this process of displacement to question the authenticity of language and the extent to which language conditions the way we think and feel.