The Fortitude Game

Part sport, part morality play, part slapstick comedy, The Fortitude Game finds that vengeful streak you like to keep hidden and lets you experience what your well meaning choices might mean when bound up in an intimate system of rules with those of self confessed pacifist or a self delusional masochist.

Three players compete to create a full character by collecting colour coded uniforms and antique sporting equipment. Each item carries a burden of forfeit and rank that positions the players in an endless cycle of absurd humiliations, grudges and unhealthy allegiances.

Good sportsmanship and fine play are pushed to the limits, as the tragicomic nature of the game becomes a balancing act of moral and physical endurance.

The Fortitude game was originally played on the original site of Lords Cricket Ground in London during the summer of 1997. It then had a brief and somewhat violent life in British public parks before presenting itself as an alternative to the 1998 Soccer World Cup in the South of France. In 2005 it experienced a small revival in the form of the Melbourne Victoria Gardens Series along side a gallery retrospective under the title of the Museum of Fortitude.