Special Screenings | TOTAL REFUSAL // RETROSPECTIVE
UNIT.Core | B.8

05.09 | 18:00

16+

Tickets

The pseudo-marxist media guerilla Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary video games. It works with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Their films and performances were presented among others at Berlinale ‘20, Locarno 22 and at the MoMA in NYC and they have received more than 46 international and national awards and honorary mentions.

The current members of Total Refusal are: Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner & Michael Stumpf.

The screening is supported by the Austrian Cooperation Office in Lviv and Ukraine Office Austria.

Running time 77 min.

  • Operation Jane Walk
    Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner

    Austria | 16:14 | 2018

    A city tour through the architecture of an Online Shooter. The film is based on the dystopian multiplayer shooter Tom Clancy’s: The Division. In this work, the game’s digital war zone is appropriated with the help of an artistic operation. Within the rules of the software, the militaristic environment is being reused for a pacifistic city tour.

  • Superwonder
    Adian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein, Robin Klengel & Leonhard Müllner

    Austria | 04:33 | 2021

    The constructedness of the digital firmament becomes visible and points of contact between late capitalists, conspiracy theorist and romanticist world experience open up.

  • Deconstructing the Bridge
    Adrian Jonas Haim, Jona Kleinlein, Leonhard Müllner

    Austria | 24:00 | 2022

    Together with the local artist and operator of the Besienderhuis residency Jan-Wieger van den Berg, Total Refusal walks through the digital replica of the area next to the city of Nijmegen within the video game Battlefield V. This Dutch town and its famous bridge appear in many World War II shooters, famous for its bridge which played a crucial role during the liberation of Europe.

  • Hardly Working
    Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf

    Austria | 20:38 | 2022

    Hardly Working gives priority to characters that normally fade into the background of video games: NPCs. NPCs are non-playable characters that populate hyper real worlds to create the appearance of normality. Usually these digital extras play no major role in the story of the game. Here a laundress, a stableman, a street sweeper, and a handyman are the four main characters of this film.

  • Kinderfilm
    Adrian Jonas Haim, Robin Klengel, Michael Stumpf

    Austria | 11:35 | 2023

    Despite its overwhelming detail, the city of Los Santos in the video game GTA V is character-ised by a grave absence: children. The film explores the uncanniness of the normality of a beautiful yet ulitmately futureless digital world.