Sky Line forms Chapter 6 of Lawrence Lek’s Bonus Levels (2013-2016), a series of site-specific video games based on alternate versions of real places. Conceived as a virtual novel, Lek uses simulation as a medium to assemble collages of objects and places drawn from reality. The project is usually presented as a double-screen installation with video game and narrative walkthrough video displayed side-by-side.
In Sky Line, Lek responds to the lack of infrastructure for independent galleries and project spaces in London, using the medium of a video game to create a unified transportation network for these disparate zones. Modelled as a floating version of the Circle Line, each station is based on a location participating in the independent Art Licks Weekend festival, with the galleries’ physical architecture transformed into idealised digital models.
In this virtual world, travellers are given unlimited access to the hovering trains, moving between independent galleries, domestic exhibitions, subterranean spaces, and other fragments of the city. Sky Line proposes a form of utopia where the vision of London is not of financial skyscrapers, but of infinite access.
