Workshop #3: Hijacking Video Games & Collective Working with Total Refusal at ASP

Workshops held in English.

During this six-hour workshop the Total Refusal collective will present their practice spanning film, theory and performance. Together with participants they will move through the hyperrealistic cities and landscapes of contemporary AAA games, deconstructing their mechanisms through subversive interventions and analysing the ideology embedded in their code. The workshop will begin with a discussion of Total Refusal’s experience of analysing and appropriating popular video games, as well as of the specifics of collective work: democratic decision-making, co-authorship, mutual care among friends and the tensions arising from giving up full control. They will then move on to a practical part devoted to creating machinima — films made inside video game engines. Participants will learn to critically analyse entertainment media and take their first steps in directing their own short machinima.