Greenboots | Alix Desaubilaux

As we read on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the tragic event, Green Boots is the name used to indicate the unidentified body of a climber, probably Tsewang Paljor, who died on an expedition to Mount Everest in 1996. This body, where it was found and never moved, with its recognizable green boots, has become a reference point for climbers who subsequently walked the ridge where it lies. From 2014 to 2017, Green Boots went missing, allegedly removed or buried by with some stones.

The figure of Green Boots has become symbolic because it is inserted in a ski game and simulator thanks to the customization processes of the players’ avatars. In Alix Desaubliaux’s video, Green Boots resurrects in the game. The appropriation and rewriting of this story and the superimposition of the imaginary character with the real one creates tangent scenarios, fragments of a possible story which, thanks to its new meaning, becomes emblematic and open, thanks to the many ways of the game, with perhaps even a happy ending.

©Alix Desaubliaux, Greenboots, 2017
Video, 1920 x 1080
4’45
Courtesy METRONOM

02/11/2020