TALK #1
18/08 │FRI
13.00 │ Sutjeska Cinema
Total Refusal (Austria)
Speakers: Susanna Flock, Leonhard Müllner
Digital media play a crucial role in the creation, modification, and communication of political and social values. It isn’t for nothing that Niklas Luhmann argued that whoever wants to understand society need only take a look at mass media. And over the last couple of years, arguably no other contemporary media has seen the same rise to public relevance as video games, having shed their boys’ room stigmata and now yielding significantly more revenue than both film and music combined. Mainstream video games fill a role not unlike that of blockbuster films – they create and reinforce hegemonic values (while largely failing their potential as interactive media to challenge those values). Yet, in the space of art and critical cultural analysis, video games still play a minor role that betrays their cultural significance.
Total Refusal is a Marxist artists’ collective which appropriates contemporary video games in order to both shed critical light on their dominant narratives and their political significance as well as to misuse their resources to tell new narratives that ignore the gameplay mechanics intended by the game developers.
Moderator: Wouter Jansen, sale agent, owner of the sales and festival distribution company Square Eyes.