In their solo exhibition, Total Refusal challenges the divide between work and leisure, revealing them as two sides of the same capitalist logic. Through two installations, the collective explores the labor loops of video game NPCs—digital workers caught in endless cycles of production and play.
Type: Exhibition
Opening: April 3, 2025, 19:00
Duration: April 3 – June, 7, 2025
City, Country: Prishtinë, Republic of Kosovo
Venue: Shtatëmbëdhjetë Galeria17, St.Henrik Bariç, no.10, Prishtinë, 10000, Republic of Kosovo
Permanent Raging Presence negotiates the spheres of work and leisure on the examples of video game NPCs (non-player characters) – not as opposites, but as two sides of the same coin: Labor and the reproduction of labor force.
Hardly Working is an ethnographic video installation that explores human working conditions under capitalism. It draws on the algorithmic loops of work that constitute the day-to-day of the digital extras who populate video game worlds in order to simulate “normality”. The apparent metronomic structure and perpetual repetition that define their existence are shared by Club Stahlbad, a multimedia installation that follows the NPCs onto the dance floor. Here, the paradox of coded ecstasy makes for an awkward spectacle that is emblematic of the enforced entertainment within the capitalist mode of production. In truth, NPCs don’t need to reproduce their labor force. In many ways, they are the perfect workers – Sisyphus machines, so to speak. They don’t tire; they don’t organize, they don’t resist – that is if they function as intended. Because ultimately, it’s the glitch that opens a crack in the door to escape.
Bios
Total Refusal is a collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances, and lectures. The collective’s themes are informed by critical game studies and social theory in an attempt to promote and popularize a counter-hegemonic left. Their work has been screened at over 300 film and art festivals and exhibited at various spaces. Since their foundation in 2018, Total Refusal have been awarded with more than 65 prizes and honorary mentions.
Susanna Flock (*1988 in Graz) lives and works in Vienna as a visual/media artist. She graduated at the University of Art and Design Linz (2015) and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (2017), Austria. Flock works in the field of video and video installation and focuses on internet phenomena. Recently, she was awarded with the Cité internationale des arts residency of BMKÖS (2024) Pixel, Bytes and Film residency (2020), Viktor-Fogarassy-Price (2019), the Rote Fabrik residency Zurich (2019), start-scholarship for media arts Austria (2018) and with a fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude (2018). Joined Total Refusal in 2020.
Robin Klengel (*1988 in Graz), lives and works as an artist and cultural anthropologist in Vienna and Graz. He researches, writes texts, gives lectures and courses and makes films in the field of artistic-scientific research of urban and digital spaces. He studied cultural anthropology in Graz and Berlin. Since 2021 he is co-chairman of the interdisciplinary art and culture space Forum Stadtpark in Graz. He co-founded the collective in 2018.
Leonhard Müllner (* 1987 in Graz), lives and works in Vienna as a visual artist and media researcher. Currently he teaches “Narratology” at the Media and Education-Department at the Art University Linz, AT. He studied Visual- and Media Art in Linz, Leipzig and Vienna and recently finished his PHD in Game Studies / Game Art. He co-founded the collective in 2018.
Michael Stumpf (* 1985 in Wels), studied Philosophy in Vienna as well as Media Culture and Art Theories in Linz (unfinished). His research interlaces a background in phenomenology with media and culture semiotics, analyzing the relevance and operating mode of popular cultural tropes. He works as an artist, designer and coder. Stumpf co-founded the collective in 2018.
Partner and Venue
Shtatëmbëdhjetë
Shtatëmbëdhjetë (17) originally emerged as a collaborative duo and based on the need to re-functionalize alternative public spaces, officially established itself as a foundation in 2018, headquartered in Prishtina, Kosovo. Shtatëmbëdhjetë (17) visions that citizens of all genders participate and contribute meaningfully and freely in the community and public life through culture, education and activism. Its mission is to foster positive change in society through empowering communities by means of cultural activism.
www.foundation17.org
Galeria 17
Galeria 17 is the exhibition space run by Shtatëmbëdhjetë. It is an experimental and versatile space, which adapts and transforms depending on development needs.
www.galeria17.org
Credits
This exhibition is supported by Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, KCSF, SMART Balkans, Austrian Embassy Prishtina.
