TOTAL REFUSAL

Friday, March 17 – Sunday, April 2

hardly working

2022 / Austria

Chapelle de l’Ancien Hôpital Général, Rue Sainte-Rose, Clermont-Ferrand

Opening hours :
Tuesday to Saturday from 1pm to 7pm
Sunday from 2pm to 6pm

For group or school visits, please contact the VIDEOFORMES team by email (videoformes@videoformes.com) with the subject “Group visit” or by telephone (+ 33(0)4 73 17 02 17) at least 48 hours in advance. Thank you for your understanding.

The work :

Hardly Working sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs. They are non-player characters that populate the digital world as extras to create the appearance of normality. A laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are Sisyphus machines, whose labour routines, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.

The artists :

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. Their films and performances were presented among others at Berlinale ‘20 and at the MoMA in NYC and they recently received the award for the best Austrian short documentary (Diagonale’20, Graz).

The artists’ website : https://totalrefusal.com

Credits :

Original title: Hardly Working
English title: Hardly Working Country: Austria
Year: 2022

Length: 20:29 min
Director: Total Refusal / Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf

Supported by the Kunstraum Steiermark stipend (Land Steiermark) and Kunsthaus Graz. Realised within the framework of the European Media Art Platforms (EMAP) programme at Werkleitz (DE) with support of the Creative Europe Culture Programme of the European Union.