RED REDEMPTION: A Marxist Crash Course in Red Dead Redemption 2. Performance by Total Refusal

Performance by Total Refusal collective taking place in the Red Dead Redemption universe.

Free admission until full capacity. English with simultaneous translation.

The city of Saint Denis is located in the southern United States and is a pastiche of New Orleans in the early twentieth century. It is the capital of the video game Red Dead Redemption 2. Women and men toil in the factories, sit in the mud in front of their shacks at night, while the bourgeois leisure class reads newspapers or poetry in manicured gardens on the other side of the map. In between, the middle class strolls the boulevard and visits the theater. Hundreds of NPCs (Non-Playable Characters), the extras of this setting, meticulously stage the same class relations that shape the urban landscapes of digital and physical capitalist realities alike. Within a pseudo-Marxist urban tour, Total Refusal analyzes profit and surplus value, capital and accumulation in the mass medium of a video game. A crash course in Marxism against the backdrop of a conventional video game.

Three different characters - a robot and two German children - drive a carriage through the city and stop at specific locations. As they talk about the city and Marxist theories, the world interacts with them. NPCs start crying, run away, act strangely or provoke situations. This is Total Refusal's way of intervening in video games, appropriating their hyper-real worlds and applying political content where there is none. His essay films, based on research, are humorous as they unfold in a universe that reacts unpredictably to the filmmakers. And he defies artifacts that only serve to amuse, his discursive no-man's land that pretends to be ideological.

After the performance, it will be possible to attend a session of shortfilms from the collective at Cineteca: 19:30 h. Sala Plató (Cineteca) Retrospective Total Refusal Session 2 Tickets here

In collaboration with Intersección - International Film Festival of A Coruña, we present a retrospective of the collective's work to date at Cineteca Madrid and will welcome several members of the collective to Medialab for a masterclass and performance prior to the sessions.

Program:

October 22nd

18:00 h. Nave Una (Medialab) “OPEN ENDED STORIES”.

19:30 h. Sala Plató (Cineteca) Retrospective Total Refusal Session 1 Tickets here

October 23rd

18:00 h. Nave Una (Medialab) “RED REDEMPTION: A Marxist Crash Course in Red Dead Redemption 2”. Performance by Total Refusal collective.

19:30 h. Sala Plató (Cineteca) Retrospective Total Refusal Session 2 Tickets here

October 24th

19:30 h. Sala Plató (Cineteca) Retrospective Total Refusal Session 3 Tickets here

TOTAL REFUSAL

The pseudo-Marxist media guerrilla Total Refusal is a collective of artists, researchers and filmmakers who reuse the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances and classes. The collective's themes draw from critical play 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 in diverse spaces.

Since its inception in 2018, Total Refusal has won over 65 awards and honorable mentions, such as the Diagonale Film Award for Best Short Film Doc, the Contemporary Visual Arts Award of the Province of Styria and the Vimeo Staff Pick Award among others. Total Refusal has screened at over 130 film and video festivals such as Berlinale (2020), Doc Fortnight at MOMA New York and IDFA Amsterdam (2018) and have exhibited at various exhibition spaces such as the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021, HEK Basel (2020) and Ars Electronica Linz (2019).

Robin Klengel (1988, Graz) lives and works as an artist and cultural anthropologist between 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-chair of the interdisciplinary art and cultural space Forum Stadtpark in Graz. He co-founded the collective Total Refusal in 2018.

Adrian Jonas Haim (1991, Vienna) is a filmmaker and political activist based in Vienna, with work that extends beyond the city. He studied Political Science and Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Adrian has been actively involved in various writing, music, and art projects, focusing on Marxism and ideology within cross-media culture. He previously served as an editor for MALMOE Zeitung and has programmed film series centered on the politics of remembrance for organizations such as Filmclub Tacheles, the Vienna Jewish Film Festival, and the This Human World Film Festival. In 2020, he joined the collective Total Refusal.