Antonin Fourneau tells all on Eniarof Moscow, the festival of DIY games

Eniarof installed its consoles and tinkered attractions for the festival of science, art, and technology at Moscow’s Polytech Museum on May 11-22. The man behind this deviant and resolutely DIY funfair is the artist Antonin Fourneau. Makery asked him to tell us about this 19th edition.

The idea sprung in 2005… Antonin Fourneau, then a student of fine arts in Aix-en-Provence, imagined for his final project an event that he called Eniarof (“foraine” or funfair, spelled backwards). The first edition was a freak DIY happening, mixing retrogaming, odd materials and electronic circuits. The concept was quick to catch on. Antonin framed it as the “Eniarof dogma” (in reference to Lars Von Trier’s dogme) to lay down the principles of this deviant festival, namely: everything is “made” from scratch, before the event. Since then, Eniarof, like traditional funfairs of the past, is a traveling carnival that has been exported around the world: from Aix-en-Provence, Lille, Poitiers… to Maribor and Beijing.

But what is the recipe for this funfair hack? We set up the mic in Antonin’s studio at ICI Montreuil, where he teaches interaction design at École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), and invited him to comment on images from the 19th edition: “Retrocompatible Museum Moscow”, affectionately rebaptized “Moscowniarof” by its participants.

Leading up to the playable exhibition of consoles and tinkered attractions of the Polytech Festival was an intensive workshop (May 11-20), attended by a team of Russian artist-designers, students in video game design at Paris 8 University and in interaction design at ENSAD (brought together by Labex Arts-h2h), and animated by artists and designers Guillaume Stagnaro, Manuel Braun, Grégoire Lauvin, Sophie Daste, Eric Nguy and Antonin Fourneau. After an inspiring visit to the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines, a little tour of Polytech’s fablab-in-progress and a few all-nighters, Eniarof presented six playful experiences to the public: Kill-Ka, Darwin in Charge, Lyagoush’ à la Russe, Освободитель номинала, Aelita and Tesla says. Audio slideshow below.

Launch the video and click on the icon (at the bottom right) to activate the English subtitles: