EVENT: SEBASTIAN LÜTGERT (13—26 FEBRUARY 2026)
Los Santos Plays Itself
digital video, color, sound, 1 hour 4 seconds, 2017, Germany.
created by Sebastian Lütgert
February 13–26 2026
Los Santos Plays Itself records a live performance realised inside Grand Theft Auto Online in 2017. Inspired by Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003), Sebastian Lütgert approaches Los Santos as a city made from borrowed images: cinema-derived urban shorthand and real-estate fantasy, activated by networked routines and behavioural scripts. Working through the Luxemburg persona, Lütgert treats the simulated metropolis as a manufactured image-city, built from cinematic convention and aspirational urban fantasy, then animated by procedural logic. The performance turns movement through the city, its signage, and its soundscape into critical material, asking how urban ‘common sense’ changes when the metropolis can be revisited and iterated as a shared dynamic environment rather than consumed as a finished audiovisual product.
Sebastian Lütgert (also known as Robert Luxemburg) is a Berlin-based artist, writer, and programmer whose practice centres on autonomous archiving, pirate infrastructures, and the software conditions of circulation. He co-founded Bootlab (2000–07), Pirate Cinema Berlin (2004–), 0xDB (2007–), and Pad.ma (2008–), and has co-organised international events including The Dictionary of War, The Oil of the 21st Century, and Properties of the Autonomous Archive. His work has been presented in contexts such as PS1 and Kunstwerke, Manifesta, the Gwangju and Taipei Biennials, Documenta (with Pad.ma), and the Istanbul Biennial.