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The Prix Ars Electronica Archive is a collection enabling search and viewing of all the submissions since 1987. The award-winning projects are documented with catalogue texts and audio-visual media. All other submissions can be searched by title/artist and displayed with year, category in list form. Please cite the credits (artwork name, artist and photographer) and only use the materials if your article is related to Ars Electronica.
Total Refusal – pseudo-marxist media guerilla
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Credits: Red Redemption
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Computer games are at once the poster boy of the capitalist entertainment industry and the neglected mass medium of our time. The artists' collective Total Refusal explores this ever expanding field with artistic interventions. Important impulses are the role of art as a political medium, media upcycling as well as hyper-realism in computer games.
Total Refusal was founded in 2018 by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf, and joined by Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, and Jona Kleinlein in 2020. Launched as "Digital Disarmament Movement," the group now defines itself as a "pseudo-marxist media guerilla." The open collective critizises existing practices in the genre of video games and opens up a new perspective with tools of appropriation and repurposing of game resources: "Acknowledging that this media is currently failing to realize its cultural potential, we aim to appropriate digital game spaces and put them to new use. Operating within games but casting aside the intended gameplay, we dedicate these resources to new activities and narratives, seeking to create “public” spaces with a critical potential."
Links: https://totalrefusal.com/
Total Refusal was founded in 2018 by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, and Michael Stumpf, and joined by Susanna Flock, Adrian Jonas Haim, and Jona Kleinlein in 2020. Launched as "Digital Disarmament Movement," the group now defines itself as a "pseudo-marxist media guerilla." The open collective critizises existing practices in the genre of video games and opens up a new perspective with tools of appropriation and repurposing of game resources: "Acknowledging that this media is currently failing to realize its cultural potential, we aim to appropriate digital game spaces and put them to new use. Operating within games but casting aside the intended gameplay, we dedicate these resources to new activities and narratives, seeking to create “public” spaces with a critical potential."
Links: https://totalrefusal.com/
Total Refusal & ZKM Karlsruhe
The pseudo-marxist media guerilla Total Refusal explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. It works with tools of appropriation and rededication of game resources. Total Refusal are Robin Klengel (AT), Leonhard Müllner (AT), Michael Stumpf (AT), and since 2020 also Susanna Flock (AT), Jona Adria Kleinlein (DE), and Adrian Jona Haim (AT). Since 2018, the work of the artists' collective has been awarded 31 prizes and was showcased at more than 130 international film and video festivals as well as in numerous exhibitions, including the Berlinale, BFI London, Doc Fortnight at MoMA, NY, HEK Basel, Ars Electronica, and the Venice Biennale 2021. Since 2019, Total Refusal is also represented in the ZKM collection.