young artists gamify Olympics in two-part Paris show

Of the many Olympics-themed exhibitions taking place in Paris this summer, Gold Rush, a two-part show at Lafayette Anticipations and the Ateliers Médicis, is certainly the most whimsical. Co-ordinated by ebb.global, a branch of the Franco-Algerian artist Neil Beloufa’s practice dedicated to tech-led cultural projects, the exhibition has been imagined and designed by 60 students from the Alfred Nobel secondary school in Clichy-sous-Bois, eastern Paris, who were given carte blanche to conjure their own alternative Olympic park.

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel, the curator and director of Lafayette Anticipations, says Beloufa came to her with the idea for a show that would “give pride of place to the student’s own imaginaries, mythologies and outlooks on the world”. The result is an escape-game-cum-theme-park that invites visitors on a quest to retrieve the Olympic flame, which has been stolen by a hacker. The rides dreamt up by the students “cast an eye that is at times idealised, at times critical of the world around them”—but always filled with a lot of humour.

Among them is an urban rodeo ride on a motorcycle; a labyrinth set in a post-apocalyptic forest; and Golf-foot, a hybrid between golf and football. Meanwhile, the part of the show at the Atelier Médicis takes visitors back into the hacker’s storied past as an 18th-century filibuster, shedding light on the reasons that led him to sabotage the Olympics and his demands for its return.

Over a year, Beloufa, accompanied the students through workshops, giving them access to his studio and the facilities at Lafayette Anticipations and the Ateliers Médicis. He also helped them with his technology skills to make the project connected and interactive. The playful and highly narrativised nature of the project is reminiscent of Beloufa’s own practice; during the pandemic he developed Screen Talk (2020), a zany web-based game set in a world in the throes of a hallucination-inducing pandemic.

“Neil and I are interested in the question of culture: what do we call culture, who gets to make it, and who it speaks to,” Lamarche-Vadel says. Some of the students have also been hired to work at Lafayette Anticipations during the summer, to guide visitors.

“We’re trying to create a virtuous process of transmission and empowerment,” Lamarche-Vadel explains, “that will allow the students to develop new skills and experiences that might help them with their future careers, and for a few of them, to enter an art school, something which was not really in the cards for them a year ago. It’s about opening up new perspectives, for them and for us.”

• Gold Rush, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris, until 1 September; Ateliers Médicis, Clichy-sous-Bois, until 27 July