• Exhibition
  • Research

[ How to
Disappear ]

Total Refusal

  • Date

    4. July 2023

  • Partner

    Total Refusal

  • Location

    Vienna, AT

With this cooperation with the lovely team of Total Refusal we customized our engine further and developed techniques to generate 3D video elements. The work deals with the history of disobedience in the face of terror and war.

  • We are proud to have [ How To Disappear ] as a permanent position at Ballhausplatz, right in front of the political power center of Austria. Similar to Downing Street or the Hotel Matignon, the name Ballhausplatz is a synecdoche for the seat of power. This is the best spot for the anti-war essay [ How To Disappear ], which is available as four digital spatial projections and adds another narrative layer to Olaf Nicolai’s analogue “Monument to the convicts of Nazi military justice” on site. In cooperation with Total Refusal, a collective that hacks into video games to tell new stories in and with them, we shed light on the history of disobedience in the face of state terror.

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We are happy to collaborate with the wonderful SystemKollektiv: great partners in crime with whom the public space can be artistically conquered;

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Total Refusal

  • Not only the content, but also the technology behind it makes us proud: With this project we used our customized technique and AI depth data to generate three dimensional video elements of the film ‘How to Disappear’. Another key part was our specially created script that generates a 3D scene element from a single frame of a video. This enabled us to use those video snippets as stage requisites in real space. Through this process, the augmented reality experience enables a new and unique realization of Total Refusal's masterwork.

    The short film 'How to Disappear' by Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf (Kollektiv Total Refusal) deals with “desertion” in video games as well as the wider context of the history of desertion and already won numerous prices. By asking what a deserter is, Total Refusal penetrates the narrative of a first-person shooter game. 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 explores possible forms of resistance. Using interventions in the virtual battlefield, the collective explores the scope and limits of the audiovisual entertainment machine and at the same time creates a digital space for reflection on reality.

    Total Refusal sees itself as a pseudo-Marxist media guerrilla that mainly researches questions of capitalism, war and politics in video games. The collective (consisting of Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf, Susanna Flock, Adrian Haim and Jona Kleinlein) develops films and installations from video games using the means of appropriation and rule-breaking within the medium.

    • Artists:

    • Total Refusal: Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf

    • Concept and Development:

    • SystemKollektiv

    • Photos:

    • © SystemKollektiv

    • Sponsor:

    • KOER Vienna

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