With: Gabriel S Moses (sequential artist and graphic novelist, IL/DE), Chris Köver (co-founder of Missy Magazine, journalist and feminist activist, DE), Matthias Fritsch (artist, author of videomeme Kneecam No.1 aka Technoviking, DE), Pedro Lopes (computer scientist, artist & hardware thinker, PT/DE). Oliver Lerone Schultz (researcher, DE).

Event inspired by the work of sequential artist and graphic novelist Gabriel S Moses.

Event funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin. In cooperation with Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien and in collaboration with SPEKTRUM. Curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli.

With a conceptual site-specific Cube intervention by Topics Books – Weserstr. 166, Berlin Neukölln

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Social media and technology are reshaping our understanding of the distinctions between story, game, discourse, and life. This two-day event, brings a multi-angled perspective in which from one side, artists, graphic novelists, game developers, and researchers question and play the narrative embedded into games, social media platforms, and their usage; from the other side, they reflect on the consequences of spreading our identity into the vortex of social media imaginary, to the point that social media starts hunting us back, as we become the game.

With the emergence of social media platforms we are gaining new abilities to play with the narrative, to affect both our imagined recollections and our tangible physical environments. But is this a means for better individual control or a plunge into an overwhelming spin-out?

The cases of #gamergate and Technoviking demonstrate that borders between games, smart media and our private life are often very questionable. #gamergate has shown to an extreme degree that sexisms, and online hate can become really tangible and advocacy against online-harassment is deeply needed. The story of Technoviking has instead shown how Internet phenomena and memes can become a crucial question of intellectual property and personal rights.

So is online life now all a game or just a story?

Some would say language is now fully collapsing into the real. Everything is at hand, everything is virtual; there’s an app for that; all our most fundamental daily actions are quantified and compartmentalised into generic automation series, told apart by upgrades and business schemes.

We go out on the streets but we protest through our smartphones; we practically play with politics using like, share and post keys instead of jump, right and left; we convey emotion and proliferate content instantaneously to all the world’s corners but we don’t know how big our world really is, how much of it we are affecting, and when it comes down to what we feel about it, well, liking has very little to do with actually liking things anyways.

Herein lies an invitation to ponder on and evaluate the current cognitive, social and even political significance of these overarching online multisensory ‘game-stories’ and to reconsider – what’s their moral and what’s at stake? Or is this the kind of psychedelic trip Super Mario has when he eats the wrong mushroom?

Tickets
@Studio 1: 5 €
@Spektrum: open donation (Sat) / 2 € (Sun)

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VENUE:
Studio 1/ Kunstquartier Bethanien,
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin

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PROGRAMME:

Saturday Aug 8, 2015

17:00-18:00 – The Great Superpower Shroom Binge: Social Media As A Psychedelic Webcomic

Gabriel S Moses (sequential artist and graphic novelist, IL/DE)

18:30-20:00 – Panel: Gamergates, Haptics & Technovikings

Chris Köver (co-founder of Missy Magazine, journalist and feminist activist, DE), Matthias Fritsch (artist, author of videomeme Kneecam No.1 aka Technoviking, DE), Pedro Lopes (computer scientist, artist & hardware thinker, PT/DE).  Moderated by Oliver Lerone Schultz (researcher, DE). Respondent: Gabriel S Moses.

21.30 – Partner event at SPEKTRUM, Bürknerstraße 12, 12047 Berlin-Kreuzberg — open donation

Conductive Ensemble Performs: A Rough Guide On How To Play Musicians By Pedro Lopes
+ Open End Bar

Sunday Aug 9, 2015

20:30 – Partner event @ SPEKTRUM, Bürknerstraße 12, 12047 Berlin-Kreuzberg – 2€, donation welcome.

Screening: The Story of Technoviking. Monumentary by Matthias Fritsch (Germany, 2015, 90min, in English).
+ Open end bar

Read more here: http://www.disruptionlab.org/a-game-of-you