Deserteursdenkmal, Vienna
How to disappear 02
- Total Refusal

The short film How to Disappear by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf (collective Total Refusal) negotiates "desertion" in video games as well as the big picture of the history of desertion. In 2020, the film received the Diagonale Award for Best Short Documentary. Now the Artificial Museum connects it with the place that in 2014 became a collective place of remembrance for those persecuted by the National Socialist military justice - i.e. deserters and "Wehrkraftzersetzer" - and adds a narrative dimension to Olaf Nicolai's memorial.
Via the question of what a deserter is, Total Refusal penetrates the narrative of a first-person shooter game (a video game in which players fight other players or computer-controlled opponents with firearms in a three-dimensional game world). The picturesque battlefields of the video game "Battlefield V" provide the backdrop for an essay-like fictional narrative that deals with war and play, discipline and disobedience, and asks about the possible forms of resistance. Through interventions in the virtual battlefield, the collective explores the play spaces and limits of the audiovisual entertainment machine and simultaneously and creates a digital reflective space for reality. "The narrative creates a rift through which physically real realities enter the depoliticized fun stage of the game." (Total Refusal)