10.54103/ai/19908
In this paper, we examine a new set of hybrid ludic practices utilizing cross-media narration that emerged with the rise of the Internet commonly called Alternate Reality Games. However, we propose to coin the term Alternate Virtuality Games (or AVG) as a way to distinguish these digital practices from their real-life counterpart. Viral online AVGs like This House Has People in It (Resnick, 2016) or Ben Drowned (Jadusable, 2010) are emblematic of a horizontal relationship between work and spectator, as well as performance outside of art institutions. The immersiveness of AVGs is unbound by the space and time of a specific happening, and is rather experienced by a multitude of agents at different times and places. This characteristic of being an extra-individual experience as well as being independent from institutions also places AVGs within liminal experiences such as studied by anthropologist Victor Turner.As such, we analyze these hybrid games as a mean for the 21st century spectator to overturn societal status quo through newfound agency. These performing agents get into a subjective state where they can experience and criticize our relationship to digital devices in a society of information and control, without being subjected to it.
application/pdf
2785-7433
19908
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en
Thibaut Vaillancourt
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN 2785-7433]
Subjectivation
How Digital Hybridization Creates New Performance Practices: The Case of Alternate Virtuality Games
Text.Serial.Journal
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2023-12-29
2023-03-06
2023-12-29
2024-02-23
AN-ICON
Thibaut Vaillancourt
2023/12/29
10.54103/ai/19908
University Paris Nanterre, University of Konstanz
2785-7433
II
Subjectivation
en
Winnicott, D., Playing and Reality (London: Tavistock, 1971).
How Digital Hybridization Creates New Performance Practices: The Case of Alternate Virtuality Games
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/anicon/article/download/19908/20009
2
            How Digital
            Hybridization
Creates New Performance
Practices: The Case of
Alternate Virtuality Games
by Anthony Bekirov
and Thibaut Vaillancourt Alternate reality game
                          Liminality
                          Digital studies
                          Mediatic event
                          Subjectivation




                     Issue №2               Year 2023
                     → Immersions and Dives:
                     From the Environment
                     to Virtual Reality
                     Edited by Roberto P. Malaspina,
                     Elisabetta Modena, and Sofia Pirandello
How Digital Hybridization
Creates New Performance
Practices: The Case of
Alternate Virtuality Games
ANTHONY BEKIROV, CHUV and IHM in Lausanne – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2754-5727
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT, Paris Nanterre; University of Konstanz – https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3558-4961
https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19908



Abstract                      In this paper, we examine a new set of hy-
                 brid ludic practices utilizing cross-media narration that
                 emerged with the rise of the Internet commonly called
                 Alternate Reality Games. However, we propose to coin
                 the term Alternate Virtuality Games (or AVG) as a way
                 to distinguish these digital practices from their real-life
                 counterpart. Viral online AVGs like This House Has People
                 in It (Resnick, 2016) or Ben Drowned (Jadusable, 2010)
                 are emblematic of a horizontal relationship between work
                 and spectator, as well as performance outside of art in-
                 stitutions. The immersiveness of AVGs is unbound by the
                 space and time of a specific happening, and is rather ex-
                 perienced by a multitude of agents at different times and
                 places. This characteristic of being an extra-individual
                 experience as well as being independent from institutions
                 also places AVGs within liminal experiences such as stud-
                 ied by anthropologist Victor Turner.




ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                             38                                        AN-ICON
                               As such, we analyze these hybrid games as a
                 mean for the 21st century spectator to overturn societal
                 status quo through newfound agency. These performing
                 agents get into a subjective state where they can expe-
                 rience and criticize our relationship to digital devices in
                 a society of information and control, without being sub-
                 jected to it.




Keywords         Alternate reality game                   Liminality               Digital studies
                 Mediatic event                           Subjectivation
To quote this essay: A. Bekirov and T. Vaillancourt, “How Digital Hybridization Creates New Performance
Practices: The Case of Alternate Virtuality Games,” AN-ICON. Studies in Environmental Images [ISSN
2785-7433] 2, no. 2 (2023): 38-55, https://doi.org/10.54103/ai/19908.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                               39                                          AN-ICON
                                 Introduction

                            Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are a set of
               hybrid ludic practices utilizing cross-media narration that
               emerged with the rise of the Internet, and which fall under
               the type of performance where the spectators are the main
               performers. They are constructed as real-life treasure hunts,
               where the participants are guided by a puppet master in
               public spaces, through “rabbit holes,” i.e. hints distribut-
               ed on social networks and/or websites. Similar to the art-
               ist who lays down the rules of the performance between
               themselves and the audience, the puppet master gives the
               players general instructions towards completing the game.
               However, whereas performance art is still closely depen-
               dent on the subjectivity of the artist, the puppet master’s
               (more subdued) role is solely to accompany the players in
               their experience.
                            ARGs have contributed to a less vertical rela-
               tionship between work and spectator, as well as to bring
               performance outside of art institutions. Moreover, with the
               growth of social platforms online and especially YouTube,
               the term “ARG” has been used more broadly to refer to new
               dispositifs, which we call Alternate Virtuality Games (AVGs),
               such as This House Has People in It (Resnick 2016; infra
               THHPII) or Ben Drowned (Jadusable 2010).1 They too are
               a kind of treasure hunts with well-hidden hints, but they
               are unique in that they are digital-native: they are strictly
               performed online and do not ask the players to go outside.

       1 A. Resnick, “This house Has People in It,” 2016, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/
       watch?v=x-pj8OtyO2I , accessed July 14, 2023. Other notable AVGs include: A. Resnick,
      “Alan Tutorials,” 2011-2014, https://www.youtube.com/@alantutorial; “Unedited Footage Of
       A Bear,” 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gMjJNGg9Z8; “Petscop,” 2017-2019,
       https://www.youtube.com/@Petscop; “Poppy,” 2016-ongoing, https://www.youtube.com/
       channel/UC8JE00xTMBOqKs7o0grFTfQ; “Catghost,” 2017-2019, https://www.youtube.
       com/@CatGhost,; “Dad,” 2019-ongoing, https://www.youtube.com/DadFeels, which all start
       as YouTube videos; “TheSunVanished,” 2018-ongoing, https://twitter.com/TheSunVanished,
       which is played out on Twitter; “No Players Online,” 2019, https://papercookies.itch.io/no-
       players-online, which is primarily a videogame that can be found on indie video game sharing
       platform itch.io. All links accessed July 14, 2023.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                           40                                          AN-ICON
             The rabbit holes of AVGs are merged with the dispositif it-
             self and are given as fictional devices. There is no apparent
             puppet master, nor apparent goal or treasure, other than
             finding new leads and new connections between elements
             of the “game.” The player/performer can thus view every
             aspect of their experience as part of said game. As such,
             AVGs are more akin to video games, as they tend to dis-
             solve the object/subject dichotomy.
                           Therefore, the persona of the artist is no more
             presented as a demiurge welcoming the profane audience
             to their performance. To access and participate in the AVG,
             the spectator needs not go to a specific place where their
             experience is being validated: the work takes place through
             the digital interface. In the case of AVGs, there is no clear
             delimitation between the space allotted to the performance
             and the one allotted to “real life.” The immersiveness of
             AVGs is unbound by the space and time of a specific hap-
             pening, and is rather experienced by a multitude of agents
             at different times and places. This characteristic of being an
             extra-individual experience as well as being independent
             of institutions also places AVGs within liminal experiences
             such as studied by Victor Turner. These performing agents
             dive into a state that mirrors our relationship to digital de-
             vices in a society of information – and control.
                           In this chapter, we will analyze the AVG appa-
             ratus through the socioeconomic and anthropological lens,
             in order to understand its role within society. We will see
             how it is not merely a leisurely game created for the enter-
             tainment of a few, but is a direct reaction to social anguish
             and provides leeway to greater agency for individuals. This
             participatory art form, thanks to its hybridity and plasticity,
             can be considered the epitome of our society’s relation to
             digital images – if not images in general.



ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                41                              AN-ICON
                         Erasing The Artist

                           AVGs as we said above, are modelled after Al-
             ternate Reality Games, but reworked and made palatable to
             the average Internet user of the 21st century. They share in
             common the “This Is Not A Game” (infra TINAG) philosophy,
             that is, their decision to obfuscate their gameness to the
             players, and to present themselves as real events instead
             of fiction. But instead of asking players to go outside, out
             of the comfort of their own room like ARGs do, AVGs are
             treasure hunts that take place solely on the Internet through
             various platforms: forums, websites, social networks, You-
             Tube and the like, etc. And because ARGs take place “in real
             life” and because real life is governed by social standards,
             there is always a moment where the organizers must signify
             to the players that they have achieved their goal – either
             that, or time has run out and the ARG is over. This moment
             almost never happens in AVGs, because the whole ordeal
             takes places “inside,” on the players’ computers, where
             the users are their own guide. The player in this case only
             deals with images, and not actual, real people in a real-life
             setting. As such, any image is subjected to scrutiny and
             doubt, any image can become a world of play. And we
             need to look into concrete examples to better understand
             how this world plays out.
                           One of the more emblematic AVGs is arguably
             Ben Drowned: The Haunted Cartridge, published between
             September 7 and 15 2010 by Alexander Hall on the para-
             normal board /x/ on the online discussion board 4Chan.
             Following the TINAG philosophy, Hall under the alias Ja-
             dusable introduced the first part of his narrative by stating
             clearly that this was a true story. The narrative being one
             of a sophomore college student having been gifted an old
             Nintendo 64. Looking for old games to play, he finds a
             cartridge of Zelda: Majorah’s Mask at a garage sale. When
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                42                            AN-ICON
             he boots it up, he discovers a save file titled “BEN.” When
            Jadusable tries to play, his actions are hampered by odd
             glitches as he is being shadowed by a corrupted version
             of the protagonist Link. Jadusable realizes the cartridge
             is haunted by the spirit of BEN, who starts haunting his
             computer as well. At the end of the story, BEN warns the
             readers that he shall haunt their computers too.
                           Ben Drowned first started as a forum thread.
             Soon, however, Hall started uploading videos on YouTube
             documenting glitches in the game. To be sure, these glitch-
             es were his doing, using a gameshark (a game-altering
             program) on a ROM of the game. Readers became involved
             in trying to solve what happened to the entity named BEN
             by analyzing the hidden clues within Jadusable’s writing
             and videos. Ben Drowned was not introduced as a game
            – which falls in line with the TINAG philosophy – but as the
             genuine account of a random gamer who finds himself
             confronted with peculiar, paranormal events. The idea that
             a cartridge could be haunted by the spirit of a deceased
             boy is of course ludicrous and should place the narrative
             among the fictional immediately – just as ARGs do when
             they present the players with an obvious fictional contract.
             But here is the catch: Jadusable did not present himself as
             a puppet master, nor did he present his videos as an ARG.
            As far as online users were concerned, he was a nobody
             lost in a sea of other uploaders. We unfortunately don’t have
             the place to dissect and analyze here the original comment
             section on the forum thread and the YouTube videos, but
             there were roughly two consensuses: 1) the game’s odd
             behaviour, although very unsettling, is probably just a one-
             in-a-million occurrence of bugs and malfunctions, and Ja-
             dusable is a highly superstitious person for whom this was
             the proof of a haunting; 2) Jadusable is a prankster and
             tries to capitalize on users’ curiosity and own superstitions.
             People tried to rationalize the odd events by classifying
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                43                             AN-ICON
             them either under delusions or pure fiction. But there was
             no way to be sure. And so, there was a third category of
             spectators: 3) people who believed the cartridge really was
             haunted.
                           As much as Ben Drowned still owes a great
             deal to the ARG apparatus, it kick-started a more radical,
             virtual set of practices: without a puppet master, without
             narrative closure, where events are told in a chaotic fash-
             ion. Alan Resnick and Robby Rackleff’s THHPII Has Peo-
             ple In It, aired on AdultSwim and published on YouTube
             in March 2016, integrates these new elements fully. This
             short flick shows the supposed surveillance footage of a
             typical American suburban family, who experiences unex-
             plained paranormal events, such as their daughter merging
             into the floor. The more curious watchers can click on the
             URL in the video description and access the website of a
             fictional surveillance camera manufacturer. A login page
             gives access to a secret file directory where one can find
             many more elements of the AVG.
                           THHPII is undeniably constructed as a me-
             ta-ARG. The apparatus is tentacular and offers a self-refer-
             ential image of the mechanisms at work in its interpretation,
             as well as a cryptic statement on social issues. We can
             say apparatus in the full sense of the word, as a vector of
             subjectification that gives a form to the individual subject
             and regulates discourses and behaviors. As a network of
             goal-oriented elements, the apparatus mobilizes objects
             and techniques that will produce different subjectivities.
             In the case of THHPII this conditioning is moreover made
             explicit as the work makes interpretative mechanisms a
             theme.
                           Among the numerous theories on THHPII,
             many make mention of psychiatric afflictions. At some
             point during the short, we see a TV show called Sculptor’s
             Clayground – which you can watch on YouTube – where
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                44                            AN-ICON
             the presenter played by Resnick warns against a fictional
             pathology, Lynks disease. Resnick thus plays himself as
             the supposed puppet master by playing, ironically, the one
             person afflicted by Lynks disease: the disease of making
             connections. Besides, apophenia (a symptom of over-se-
             mantization of insignificant elements) or paranoia are fre-
             quently mentioned as typical phenomena in the resolution
             of ARGs. These altered states of perceptions are indirectly
             discussed in the work within the broader theme of public
             health, and are also given as the way to “play” THHPII. The
             Lynks disease relates as much to the narrative of the THHPI,
             as to the spectatorship and its ability to conjure meaning.
                         As we see, the AVG apparatus is a complex
             system of disassembled images – of which the actual ex-
             tent is kept undisclosed – left for the spectator to make
             sense of. As the creators of AVGs withdraw themselves
             into obscurity, they give off the impression their work (their
            “game”) has seemingly appeared out of thin air and is thus
             shrouded in an apparent mystery begging to be solved. The
             form assumed by this type of media is already well within
             the realm of participatory performances, that is, the form
             of a quest for the player – however endless and fruitless
             this quest may be.

                         What is at stake in AVGs?

                         These sets of practices and dispositifs recently
             admitted into the field of academic research enable the
             reevaluation of different categories firmly anchored in our
             conceptual language. For instance, this is the case with the
             protean distinctions between subject and object. These
             distinctions establish the authority of the separate artistic
             subjectivity from a work of art as an external object – or
             at least as a shared subjective experience, and place the
             public as another subject. However, a dispositif such as
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                45                             AN-ICON
             the one formed by THHPPII makes it possible to fully real-
             ize the aspiration to horizontality present in contemporary
             art and in performance art in particular. The participatory
             or interactive nature of an artistic performance feeds, as a
             shared experience, the desire to bring together the spheres
             previously mentioned. Thus, the subjectivity of the artist is
             brought into play, in a work in where the artists themselves
             participate as an active element, and in front of a public who
             can take part in it. Nevertheless, the institutional, academic,
             economic and psychological arrangements that direct the
             performance as an event remain dependent on an authorial,
             distinctive and elitist logic. The person of the artist and the
             people who constitute the public are linked by a specta-
             torial, spatio-temporal, even economic and sociocultural
             contract. The performance takes place in a space autho-
             rized as an institution or place of artistic validation, and in
             a given time, a duration that delimits it. It is in this system
             that an audience is expected, often selective or even ex-
             clusive because it responds to identifiable socioeconomic
             and cultural determinations. This subject-object-subject
             triptych, or artist-work-public, is precisely what is shattered
             in AVGs.
                           Concurrently to the abolition of these concepts
             comes the limitlessness of the work as a situated event, as
             a finished object or entity. Indeed, whether it concerns the
             person of the artist-creator-performer, the spatio-temporal,
             cultural and institutional location of an audience, and the
             duration of a performance, none of these limiting notions
             can then account for what is radically reticulated in an
             AVG. The generalized decentralization of what can still be
             attached to an artistic performance, in the case of AVGs,
             therefore produces a mutation and a displacement. Muta-
             tion, because we observe the spatio-temporal extensions
             of what can now differently be called a performance and
             a work. An AVG is neither finite nor situated. The space
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                46                              AN-ICON
              of performance is no longer stratified by institutional and
              sociocultural criteria, but strictly technical and economic:
              anyone who has access to a screen provided with an Inter-
              net connection can now experience a continuously modi-
              fied performance – and perform it. In these performances,
              the end of the production chain (“performing audience”)
              matters more than the beginning (“artist”). The “performing
              audience” being the only entity deploying the work and the
              apparatus, the availability of the AVG on the web can be
              described as virtual, no less real but less actual. Without
              institutional or curatorial validation, AVG apparatuses are
              only actual and therefore deployed when people perform
              them. The institutional space that hosted the performance
              becomes the space of the world as part of the comput-
              erized paradigm. The time of the performance becomes
              that of the duration of attention and of a “spectatorial” in-
              tervention which the work cannot, structurally, do without.
              There is, as in video games,2 a work of art only deployed,
              by a ludic instance which determines it in a situated way,
              within singular spatio-temporal dimensions. It is therefore
              no longer a question of interactivity or participation, be-
              cause these notions presuppose an irreducible distinction
              between autonomous subjects or entities. On the contrary,
              the proper names behind the said “work” as well as the
              people they designate matter as little as the “place” where
              it takes place. The performance in the AVG is that of sub-
              jective instances brought forth and delimited by the AVG
              apparatus. The fusion of the space of the world with the
              space of performance makes it possible to approach such
              practices under the horizontal and decentralized prism of
              new forms of subjectivation. As a paragon of a comput-
              erized audiovisual paradigm, the AVG highlights the pre-
              cariousness of categories which are ultimately maintained

      2 A. Bekirov, T. Vaillancourt, “Le jeu-vidéo, expérience-limite du sujet,” Marges, no. 24 (2017):
      30-44, https://doi.org/10.4000/marges.1255.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                              47                                            AN-ICON
              only by cultural, moral and economic imperatives. Often
              unquestioned notions such as subject, object, work of art,
              or public are hence brought to a semantic limit when we
              speak about AVGs.
                           Opening the experience of performance by
              transposing it into spheres which, by definition, are for-
              eign to the worlds of institutional art, would be the main
              decompartmentalization produced by AVGs as an opera-
              tional notion. However, this does not amount to speaking
              of a degradation or dissolution of the quality of experience.
              Taking exegesis out of authorized and limited spheres to
              deploy it “outside” the institution amplifies, intensifies and
              multiplies the experience(s). This is no longer the role of
              educated and privileged observers forming an authorized
              audience, but becomes the generalized expression of a
              modus operandi and of a computerized Weltanschauung
              associated with it. More than a supposed “democratization”
              of performance art, AVGs allows us to see complex relations
              emerging from a computerized paradigm that constitutes
              new forms of attention, of thought and sensibility. Within
              a contemporary economy and ecology of attention,3 AVGs
              offer new elements to understand how our receptivity and
              our perceptual abilities are shaped by our media-technical
              environments. From this perspective, such arrangements
              allow us to analyze new processes of large-scale simulacra
              and stereotypes production, that ultimately are processes
              of subjectivation.4




      3 Y. Citton, The Ecology of Attention (2014), trans. B. Norman (Cambridge: Polity, 2017).
      4 P. Klossowski, The Living Currency (1970), trans. D.W. Smith, N. Morar, V.W. Cisney (New
      York: Bloomsbury, 2017); P. Klossowski, La Ressemblance (Marseille: Ryôan-ji, 1984).
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                           48                                         AN-ICON
                                 Computerized subjectivations 			
                                 and new apparatuses

                            To speak about Weltanschauung implies we
               need to consider the globalization of a computerized para-
               digm as a new cultural matrix and as a new communication
               and research model. Talking about a disarticulation of the
               instances at play in the institutional performance art also
               allows a critical return to the categories delineated by Ben-
               jamin.5 In the Benjaminian logic of a passage from religious
               and ritual art (unique original work) to art in its political func-
               tion (reproduced work) comes the loss of the aura. How-
               ever, this logic can be nuanced when we consider that the
               aura can, according to Latour & Lowe,6 migrate, and that a
               cult dimension remains present in intrinsically non-unique
               works, whether cinema, video game or AVGs. On the one
               hand, it seems to go without saying that the cult dimension
               of cultural productions does not disappear in a paradigm
               of technical reproducibility. Many fanatical behaviours, as
               much as fetishists ones, easily illustrate the blurring of a
               distinction between political and religious functions when
               we think about industrialized and reproduced works of art.
               On the other hand, in the paradigm of a political function
               of art, the subjectivating and ecstatic dimension of the
               relationship to the work only undergoes a regime change.
               Moreover, from the perspective of a reading of capitalism
               as religion, which Benjamin7 precisely affirmed, we can only
               speak of a transformation – of a technically assisted am-
               plification – of the forms and places of worship. It matters

      5 W. Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other
      Writings on Media, ed. M.W. Jennings, B. Doherty, T.Y. Levin, trans. E. Jephcott et al.
      (Cambridge MA-London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).
      6 B. Latour, A. Lowe, “La migration de l’aura ou comment explorer un original par le biais de
      ses fac-similés,” Intermédialités, no. 17 (2011): 173-191, https://doi.org/10.7202/1005756.
      7 W. Benjamin, “Capitalism as Religion,” in Toward the Critique of Violence: A Critical Edition,
      ed. P. Fenves, J. Ng (Redwood City CA: Stanford University Press, 2021): 90-92.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                            49                                           AN-ICON
              little whether we adopt the perspective of the spectacle
              where social relations are mediated by images,8 or simply
              that of a Weltanschauung produced by the extension of
              the information and societies of control. The challenge is
              above all to consider the permanency of logics of ritual –
              of initiation or worship – where the notions of unique work
              and institutional artist have disappeared.
                            This vestige of ritual is important because it
              opens up the analysis of individual and collective subjecti-
              vations, beyond distinctions abolished by the generalization
              of computerized apparatuses on a planetary scale. In other
              words, by decompartmentalizing performance practices
              and distinctions typical of the art world, it is a question of
              renewing a point of view and developing its consequences.
              These outline an anthropology in a computerized regime,
              which must take into account new attentional, cultural and
              economic data. By redrawing the contours of performance
              practices, AVGs present themselves as computerized de-
              vices that provide subjectivations specific to our contem-
              porary era.
                            Apparatus or dispositif became a central no-
              tion in Foucault’s work during his lessons at the Collège
              de France in 1977-1978. The term is used to describe a
              network of different elements generating subjectivities and
              behaviours.9 Foucault also describes apparatuses as net-
              works of institutions, rules and laws, scientific, moral and
              philosophical statements. In other words, Foucault’s atten-
              tion is directed to power relations within broad networks.10
              Hence, from our point of view, it becomes significant to
              integrate technological aspects of dispositifs in our anal-
              ysis, as Agamben precisely does in a more recent text. In

      8 G. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), trans. D. Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zone
      Books, 1994): 47-90.
      9 M. Foucault, Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78,
      trans. G. Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
      10 M. Foucault, Dits et écrits, 4 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), vol. 2: 299.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                          50                                        AN-ICON
              What is an Apparatus (2009), Agamben enlarges even more
              the already wide Foucauldian definition of dispositif by in-
              cluding everything that has the capacity to capture and
              subjectify living beings’ behaviours and discourse.11 AVGs
              are also an opportunity to consider subjectivities produced
              by contemporary apparatuses in a less technophobic and
              reactive way than Agamben’s analysis.
                            More extensively, this leads to new questions
              that could be answered with anthropological tools. From a
              subjectivation perspective on AVG performance, one could
              ask what remains of the rituals linked to the liminal spaces
              that Turner described, within the contemporary practices
              that interest us?

                                Reclaiming The Space Left			
                                Empty Inside Ourselves

                           British anthropologist Victor Turner stated that
              the distinctions between work and play that have been
              prevalent during the 20th century in Western societies are
              dependent on the industrialization thereof, and moreover,
              have cemented the separation of what is deemed “objec-
              tive” and what is deemed “subjective.”12 Indeed, rather than
              abstract entities left to the scrutiny of metaphysicians, Turn-
              er displaces the discussion on subject and object towards
              sociological grounds. Building on and refining Arnold van
              Gennep’s influential ideas on liminality in the rites of pas-
              sage in tribal societies,13 he analysed the way globalized
              capitalist societies have given rise to novel subjectivities


      11 G. Agamben, What Is an Apparatus? and Other Essays (2006), trans. D. Kishik, S. Pedatella
      (Redwood City CA: Stanford University Press, 2009): 14.
      12 V. Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative
      Symbology,” Rice University Studies 60, no. 3 (1974): 53-96, 66 https://hdl.handle.
      net/1911/63159.66.
      13 See for example his seminal book A. van Gennep, The Rites of Passage: A Classic Study of
      Cultural Celebrations (1909), trans. M.B. Vizedom, G.L. Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago
      Press, 1960).
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                           51                                         AN-ICON
              and where liminal spaces can be found in said societies.
              Liminality – the characteristic of being in an in-between
              state, to be on the threshold between two socially recog-
              nized subjectivities – usually pertains to pre-industrial social
              practices whose goal is to strengthen the cohesion among
              the members of a community: carnivals, Mardi Gras, com-
              ing-of-age rites, etc. all help create a sense of community,
              while at the same time reversing values, playing with the
              fringes of what is socially acceptable, albeit for a moment
              only.14 However, with the advent of the rationalization of
              the workplace in the 20th century came also the dissolution
              of the old separation between the working class and the
              nobility in favor of a new hybrid class of hard-working citi-
              zens who also enjoy leisurely pleasures in their free time.15
              In this context, the notion of social fringe and reversal of
              values, in other words, liminality, becomes less adequate.
              A new concept was required.
                            This is what Turner proposed with the idea of
              liminoid phenomena. These liminoid phenomena are re-
              enacting the ancient rites of passage but without the pre-
              siding instance of community elders, without the need to
              be recognized by others. This is now in individual affair.
              Whereas the goal of liminal practices was to guide the
              individual through collectivity, liminoid phenomena take
              place within the individual’s free time, in opposition to one’s
              time spent at the workplace: “one works at the liminal, one
              plays with the liminoid.”16 While the liminal still applies to
              environments where a figure of authority must be referred
              to in order to act, the liminoid is willed by the individual
              as a way to escape from the constraints of work. This is
              where sport, games, art and social critique happen. And
              because these liminoid practices are highly individualistic,

      14 V. Turner, “Liminality, Khaballah, and the Media,” Religion, no. 15 (1985): 205-217, 213-215.
      15 V. Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid:” 66-67.
      16 V. Turner, “Liminality, Khaballah, and the Media:” 216.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                            52                                          AN-ICON
               they enable what Turner calls the loss of ego.17 The “Self”
               which acts as the mediator or the “broker” between one’s
               and another’s actions becomes irrelevant. Since all par-
               ticipants of leisurely activities follow the same rules and
               embody these rules by their very actions, the Self is no
               longer needed to bargain about what can and cannot be
               done. Therefore, the liminoid encapsulates rather well the
              “Death of God” trope in our society: gone is the burden of
               a transcendent Being lurking over us, gone are the kings,
               and so are the authors. The creator as a demiurge is no
               more, but how do we fill the space left empty inside of us?
                            The easy way out is to fill this space with an-
               other set of liminal practices. This is easily observed in our
               neoliberal society where the line between work and leisure
               is blurred: the gamification of the workplace – such as
               providing devices for leisure like baby-foots or ping-pong
               tables to increase productivity – and the professionalization
               of gaming practices like e-sports or online streaming are
               two sides of the same capitalist coin.18 But another answer
               could also be to use this empty use as a playground for
               liminoid activities. And indeed, AVGs are eminently liminoid
               in that they do away with the author, and do so radically.
               As long as the artist or the creator appears as a guidance
               for the spectator into their work, the spectatorial experi-
               ence is hampered by the presence of the Other. There is
               this element of outside-ness to performance art, where the
               performance can only be played out insofar as the artist is
               concerned. In Alternate Virtuality Games, “virtuality” is to
               be understood as reality constructed in terms of mediatic
               events, a collection of images assembled haphazardly by
               the individual player. As the player assembles images in
      17 V. Turner, “Liminal to Liminoid:” 88.
      18 M. Antonioli, “Le stade esthétique de la production/consommation et la révolution du
      temps choisi,” Multitudes 4, no. 69 (2017): 109-114, https://doi.org/10.3917/mult.069.0109 ;
      A. Bekirov, T. Vaillancourt, “Esquisse d’une généalogie du romanesque, du point de vue du jeu
      vidéo,” in I. Hautbout, S. Wit, eds., Jeu vidéo et romanesque (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021):
      117-130.
ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                             53                                           AN-ICON
             accordance with their own criteria (what makes sense to
             them), they become the de facto creator of one possible
             performance of the game. Here we see how the loss of ego
             is inherently part of the AVG experience: as the authoritative
             figure of the Author is absent, the player can now invest
             this role and progress towards a state of indistinctness
             between subject and object, between what is created and
             what is spectated. The rise of ARGs and more so of AVGs
             can thus be interpreted as the growing social need for lim-
             inoid phenomena, a need for agency in a world of where
             subjectivation is too often synonymous with subjection.

                          Conclusion: Beyond representation

                         Taking into account such apparatuses and prac-
             tices implies new configurations and new focuses. Speak-
             ing about Weltanschauung draws a metaphysical point of
             view, and hence demands an ontology. To put it short, the
             ontology that underpins this Weltanschauung is an ontology
             of simulacra. This means that we are no longer in a regime
             of representation submitted to Reality as the only form of
             the Truth. There are of course numerous ways to escape
             from Platonism or empirical realism. The one underlined by
             AVGs is situated within a paradigm initiated by Nietzsche
             and described by Deleuze, Foucault and Klossowski, a way
             of paying attention to the effects generated by simulacra
             in many contexts. We can obviously consider post-truth
             tendencies and their political consequences as the dark
             side of such a Weltanschauung in which truth is no longer
             a dichotomous question. That being said, simulacra around
             AVGs also lead to virtuality in a narrower sense. If “virtuality”
             is to be understood as reality constructed in terms of me-
             diatic events, then the production of reality is also a ludic



ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT                 54                               AN-ICON
             process in which everyone can take part notwithstanding
             their expertise.
                           Reality, understood as produced by mediatic
             events, opens new perspectives and new possibilities for
             subjectivation. Given the fact that the distinction between
            “the real world” and “the world of the image” is no longer
             valid, every aspect of life becomes a potential reality pro-
             duction through mediatic events as the only milieu within
             which we take place. From this perspective, redefining no-
             tions such as subject, object, artist or audience, is neces-
             sary in order to describe contemporary processes that no
             longer fit in a paradigm of representation and truth.
                           In that sense, virtuality and the effectiveness
             of images are the new reality. AVGs do “environmentalise”
             images in the way they force us to zoom out from the con-
             text of institutionalized art, and understand what is going
             on outside of it. Looking at image environments in larger
             digital contexts, we realize that the theoretical and often
             abstract categories like subject, object, artwork and au-
             dience – which are still rampant today in “canonical” ar-
             tistic production – become less relevant to appreciate our
             relationship to images in the 21st century. The aesthetical,
             socio-political and psychological stakes in AVGs outline a
             new paradigm that can be applied to the sphere of institu-
             tional art and could hopefully render the rigid boundaries
             of their categories a bit more permeable.




ANTHONY BEKIROV AND
THIBAUT VAILLANCOURT               55                             AN-ICON
AN-ICON has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Grant agreement No. 834033 AN-ICON.
The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy “Piero Martinetti” – Department of Excellence at the State University of Milan.



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