Camille Laurelli & Romain Sein, The Pile

2021

Browser-based video game


Drawing on a lengthy history of video games designed to be very difficult to play or even impossible to beat (modern examples include Surgeon Simulator or I Am Bread), The Pile puts you in charge of a collection of random objects that you can lift, throw and otherwise move around in space. You can think of it as a contemporary art exhibition simulator, or an experience akin to “home alone during the pandemic simulator“, but we prefer to think of it as stacking random objects into a pile.

This version of The Pile is developed specially for „History of Joy. Part 4“ and includes an essay by the curator and critic Ramiro Camelo.

On September 21 at 6PM Camille Laurelli will give an online lecture titled „A Brief History of Difficult Video Games“, positioning The Pile within the broader context of similar games developed in the Baltic region. The lecture will be streamed live on Tallinn Art Hall's Facebook page and also available here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83062784548

The Pile is only playable on personal computers. For the best experience use any updated browser, but we recommend Firefox.

BIO

Camille Laurelli is a french artist currently lives and works in Tallinn. He is supported by the Smirnov & Sorokin foundation 2011-2017. Co-funder and curated OUI Art Center from 2007 to 2014 and he's curating Galerie Showcase in Grenoble since 2013 and Showcase Tallinn since 2016. Teaching at the Estonian Art Academy (EKA) in Tallinn as guest teacher from 2015. Head of Sculpture and Installation department at Estonian Art Academy from September 2019 to February 2021 He's also Triin Tamm's assistant from 2009, and he curated the collective exhibition « Infinite Lives » for Kunstihoone at Tallinn Art Hall in September 2016 with the curator Nicolas Audureau. He is currently running the Museum of Video Games in Tallinn since 2018.

Romain Sein is a french artist born in 1981 in Bayonne. He Graduated from the European school of IMAGE in Angoulême in 2005. Fresh from the Art school he was selected in 2007 for the Nightcomers project in the Istanbul Biennial, and was also granted a prestigious residency program in Argentina. In 2019 his project “Material World Beta” was shown in both ARS Showroom and LVLup! museum in Tallinn. His drawing practice is the source of inspiration for a wide variety of digital works, that utilizes computer graphics animation and game technology to explore a new form of interactivity. He lives in Paris and teaches drawing and multimedia at ESAPB, Art school in Bayonne.