Bets and Races

Bets and Races is an artistic research project presenting a playful paraphrase of the cult Czech version of Monopoly, a board game where success depends on smart investments and betting on featured racehorses. In many ways, the metaphor of bets and races aptly reflects the pressures of contemporary society, which constantly urges us to place the right bets and choose the best “horses” to rely on. Whether it’s speculation on the housing market, competition for visibility in the art world, or navigating a precarious job market, reality often feels like a race inside the closed loop of a board game. Through a series of exhibitions and interventions, the artist-curator collective Cejla investigates not only how the art world and the roles of its actors contribute to this system, but also the ethical and structural implications it entails for cultural production. The aim is not to escape or reject but to bring into focus the ethical tensions embedded in the logic of investment, visibility, and value. The project Bets and Races offers a reflexive lens, scrutinising how art as cultural labour and speculation intersects with questions of responsibility and complicity. If the art world already behaves like a race, what does it mean to play willingly and knowingly within those rules? Keywords: artistic research, art theory, art curating, art criticism, globalization, hyper-normalization, hyperconnectivity, post-truth, post-fake, spectacle, collective, gentrification, precarization, off-space gallery, video, performance, online platforms, critical fabulation, gamification, digital labour, scam culture, platform capitalism, Salon, game-culture, Deleuze and Guattari, accelerationism, dystopic art, art market, curatorial research, horses, Risk-taking, social media, career development, institutional critique, power relation artist community, neoliberalism, speed, Competition, deterritorializations, blockchain