Lawrence Lek
Pyramid Schemes
Video essay, 17:10
Pyramid Schemes is a treatise on architecture in eleven chapters. Narrated by a computer-simulated voice, the video takes Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) as its historical point of departure. By fusing scenes from the video game Assassin’s Creed with other simulated environments, Lek offers a sweeping journey through the evolution of architecture and spaces that reflect and inscribe power structures. The first-person perspective of a role-playing game asserts the agency of the video’s wandering protagonist, and reflects how virtual spaces reflect real-world issues of migration, access, and the privilege of being able to go to different places.
Lawrence Lek is an artist, filmmaker and musician working in the fields of virtual reality and simulation. He experiments with worldbuilding as a form of multi-dimensional collage that can incorporate elements from both material and virtual worlds, while also developing narratives that reflect on alternate histories and possible futures.