Michael Crowe - George Perec's serene conceptual exercise in 1970s Paris is reenacted once again, this time in the depraved contemporary world of Grand Theft Auto Online. Giddy murder, Fassbinder lookalike contests and amber lights twinkling in the far distance all dance together

Michael Crowe, An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in GTA Online, Studio Operative, 2017.


Michael Crowe's An Attempt At Exhausting a Place in GTA Online takes George Perec's serene 1975 conceptual exercise in Paris as its starting point, reenacting it within the chaotic and excessive virtual world of Grand Theft Auto Online. Giddy murder, Fassbinder lookalike contests and amber lights twinkling in the far distance all dance together as Michael Crowe attempts to exhaust one location in the world's most popular video game.
With an accompanying essay by Jamie Sutcliffe, this edition playfully explores the discursive spaces of online games and questions their relationship to our current material world and potential immaterial futures.

George Perec's serene conceptual exercise in 1970s Paris is reenacted once again, this time in the depraved contemporary world of Grand Theft Auto Online. Giddy murder, Fassbinder lookalike contests and amber lights twinkling in the far distance all dance together as Michael Crowe attempts to exhaust one location in the world's most popular video game. Includes an introduction by Jame Sutcliffe. —Studio Operative

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in GTA Online (Studio Operative) is Michael Crowe’s update of Perec’s famous experiment with time and attention, relocated to Los Santos, GTA’s ultra-violent T-shirt-weather multiplayer environment. Crowe’s avatar looks like Perec, with a fan of grey hair and black turtleneck, and immediately becomes a victim of griefing (repeated killing of the same player on respawn). - SAM RIVIERE