Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours)

2015

single-channel video, 18m, video game, duration variable

“Congratulations! Your bid for Burlington House and 6 Burlington Gardens was successful.

The former home of the Royal Academy of Arts is now yours.

To become the master of your own home, you must first define its mission.

The mission is different for each of your homes,

from the mansion in Miami to the villa in Piccadilly.”

INTRODUCTION

Unreal Estate (The Royal Academy is Yours) forms Chapter 9 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.

Unreal Estate imagines a future in which the Royal Academy of Arts in London has been sold to a Chinese billionaire as a luxury private mansion. Set against the capital's housing crisis, the project presents a critical look at unrestricted high-end property development. Lek explores the language of high-end property branding and the complex relationship between luxury, desire, and excess. The walkthrough video is set to a voiceover about how to hire and fire an 'army of household servants', translated into Mandarin from the Russian edition of the high-society Tatler magazine.

The Royal Academy is itself on a rental contract from the government, and this fact shows the precarious status of even the nation's oldest and most revered art establishment. In Lek's simulation, a major cultural institution can become commercial real estate. Even the heritage architecture and art collections of the Royal Academy are marketed as private property. The courtyard has a Jeff Koons bunny; the private galleries are covered in wallpaper by Yayoi Kusama; grand receptions are converted into double-height bedrooms; security is tight with laser alarms, CCTV, and encrypted wireless networks. Helicopters never stop hovering over the estate.