Kathia von Roth

Why do I feel more at home in the world of the Indie Game Sable than in a street or a shop in the Meatverse¹? Sure we know about the fact that we are all world creating but do you really think this is what Josef Beuys wanted to remind us of when saying “Everyone is an artist”? What did you come here for and which game were you told we would play? Does “A Politix for Alienation” sound like bright futures to you? And why the hack do I only find reviews on the game Sable² with people wondering how they enjoyed playing the game but still claiming to know that most players will not like it?

This lecture is at the same time a live experiment on alternate reality narration and an insight in my theory of activating environments. I will share experiences from my artistic field research on how emancipation and expected self-efficacy relate to environmental and system design in the art of games but also and especially in context of contemporary crises in the design of the rest of the world that surrounds us, may it be digital, physical, metaphysical or fantastic.

Expanding the possible topic to terms like Magic, Hyperstition, Transition Design or critical design as a new Fluxus-like form or radical artistic protest this lecture aims to inherently re-politize the skills of game design and immersive story telling. The design subject in post-capitalist futures is not the individual consumer anymore, but a group of collaboratively playing entities in editable open worlds and as times ahead promise to be stormy, those of us with immersive story telling skills might need to go beyond disciplines and the myth of any given to collectively transform this world into a more human friendly gameplay again.

“Work with whatever is at hand” (A Bricoleur)
“If nature is not fair, change nature” (The Xenofeminst Manifesto - A Politix for Alienation)
“Hack the planet” (The Internet)

¹ Meatverse: Internet slang for physical world.
² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5d71mCqWQ0

Panel Discussion with all summit speakers.