Is it a game?
IS IT A GAME? is a series of experimental exhibitions about today’s playing, realized with artists, game developers and gamers.
IS IT A GAME? is a series of experimental exhibitions about today’s playing, realized with artists, game developers and gamers.
Bora Akinciturk, Harm van den Dorpel, Mirak Jamal, Martin Kohout, Jonas Lund, Özge Topçu, Sarah Ancelle Schönfeld, Anna Uddenberg, Daniela Kneip Velescu, Anne de Vries
“Sometimes when we‘re alone we stand in our backyards in giant holes and pretend we‘re flowers“ *
Games produce a multitude of complex features that are best suited for evaluating hybrid realities. Games can be spectated, narrated, archived and curated. They are competitive and collaborative, poetic and frustrating, formal and escapistic, political and precarious, bugged and hacked, queer and self-caring and by any means biographical. From the beginning of a games learning curve, playing is an immediate form of appropriation. Players are creating undisciplinary paths and interludes to find their own space to play, a meta-game, where they begin to tell their own stories against the backdrop of fantastic worlds. They knead clay chess pieces or immerse themselves in seemingly limitless open world online games to examine the boundaries of invisible walls.
The first episode of the exhibition series IS IT A GAME? transforms Kreuzberg Pavillon into the space of The Undisciplined, a permanent game-environment, in which not only games, but playing itself occupies the space of artistic practice. IS IT A GAME? is a series of playable situations where the practices of playful artists and game makers intersect within experimental exhibition formats.
Kreuzberg Pavillon focuses on the development of extended exhibition concepts, which so far can only be created and implemented in project spaces. The special intellectual and sensory freedom experienced by artists and, in turn, the visitors in project spaces is tested in a variety of exhibitions and open concepts that form a necessary deinstitutionalized space of experience.
Curated by Heiko Pfreundt and Lisa Schorm
Organisation & Press: Vaida Stepanovaite (info@kreuzbergpavillon.de)
Tabletop Terrain : Markus Müller
Exhibition Architecture : Lukas Troberg
Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin
The Undisciplined
Opening : June 1st, 7 pm, Duration : June 1st - 24th, 2018
Kreuzberg Pavillon, Naunynstraße 53, 10999 Berlin
Opening hours : Mon - Thu. 4 - 8 pm and by appointment
www.kreuzbergpavillon.de
*Self-description by the Runescape Clan CLOSE, 2014, a group of friendly players who complete tasks, adventures and events as a group within MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Games)
Rasmus Hungnes, Gabriel Kvendseth, Eirik Storesund, Erin Sexton, Connor Sherlock
Fri. 29.06.2018, 7 – 10pm
Venue: Kreuzberg Pavillon | Naunynstraße 53 | 10999 Berlin
Over the last few centuries, the definition of the English word "ludicrous", originally meaning "pertaining to play or sport", has shifted to the derogative sense of "foolish, rediculous" – as if games, gaming, play and playing were the antithesis to any undertaking serious or worthwile. In contrast, games have developed into the most popular form of culture of the 21st century, a position occupied by the cinematographic feature during the 20th century.
In 1987, the science fiction comedy film Spaceballs introduced a velocity beyond the superluminous: “Ludicrous Speed”, so fast that it breaks your brain, curves your spine, divides by zero, and is in every way inconceivable. Paradoxically, the common, disapproving usage of “ludicrous” has been reappropriated by gaming communities. The term has been used in many online games as a superlative, congratulating players for high achievements, for example in World of Warcraft (Ludicrous Speed) and Unreal Tournament (Ludicrous Kill). It functions as term for irrational progress and skillsets attained through playing.
While the fate of the Age of Ludacrium remains uncertain, the future of automatization will allow labourers to migrate into digital worlds, populate servers, and use games as gateway experiences. Games can be utilized to transport our idea of labour into virtual spaces of play where archaic tasks such as trap building, fishing, farming or woodchopping become virtual analogues to survival-strategic and speculative labour.
In the new permanent game environment of Kreuzberg Pavillon, Ludicrarium is an assembly of buggy, whimsical, archaic utensils, fractions of fortune gambling, and rituals of paranormal play.
Curated by Rasmus Hungnes, Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm
Poison Idea
Fri. 13.07.2018, 8 pm - 10 pm
Venue: Kreuzberg Pavillon | Naunynstraße 53 | 10999 Berlin
Pranks are undoubtedly the most radical and subversive form of playing. Originally conceived as a malicious trick aimed at individuals, imaginative pranks or "hacks" can also target more abstract concepts of politics, bureaucracy, or gentrification. But what kind of demarcation and conditions lead to trangressive pranks and what role does the politics of spectatorship play in particular?
For the fourth episode of IS IT A GAME? the artist group Poison Idea (Christof Zwiener & Baldur Burwitz) presents their participatory performance Don't Fret! - a narrative situation, a finite game in which there is never a time when a player could not leave the game situation. But who ultimately determines the course of the game? Happiness or frustration? The game or the players? Who will succeed in the end of the evening's prank?
Poison Idea works with the quickly-decipherable, but technically elaborate forms of pranks, whose real purpose as practical jokes might be to take the game beyond its true end.
The artist duo uses the institutional and non-institutional places of contemporary culture, not only as a condition of their work and their tolerance areas as unsanctioned space, but playfully challenges these and their audience with participatory counter-concepts.
Curated by Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm
Omsk Social Club
Thu. 09.08.2018
Venue: Kreuzberg Pavillon | Naunynstraße 53 | 10999 Berlin
What happens in a game when a large amount of players go offline? An apocalypse begins to reign hard on those left alive. Seething knowledge, forking tools or enabling revelations the lost forms start to mutate for a better life. Fan boys of the past raise their heads alongside those who choose to listen first and laugh later. This life, world, sandbox, illusion is what Deep Nation is...a moment of pyscho-realness in a landscape that may never come.
Omsk Social Club will create a one-off larp/ role play game for Kreuzberg Pavilion during the Project Space Festival inside an installation by Tracey Snelling. Alongside artist designed characters from Naomi Bisley, Maya Ben David, Olga Mikh Fedorova, Ed Fornieles, Else Gabriel and Farondeh Sharouki there will also be 20 unique roles which are open to the public.
To participate, please apply at omsksocialclub3000@gmail.com with the word DEEP NATION PLAY for further information.
Curated by Omsk Social Club, Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm
Robin Baumgarten, Maya Ben David, Naomi Bisley, Olga Mikh Fedorova,
Ed Fornieles, Isabella Fürnkäs, Else (Twin) Gabriel, Grete Gabriel, Hulda Ros Gudnadottir, Tarren Johnson, Tom Kobialka, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, Tracey Snelling
11.08 - 09.09.2018
Venue: Kreuzberg Pavillon | Naunynstraße 53 | 10999 Berlin
Does a game need a beginning or an end – or is the psycho-geographical reality of play an infinite one? What kind of species are into games , if play existed before culture and has never been a privilege of human kind alone? Has irrational progress and skillsets obtained through playing formed an undocumented but durable place in time - a Ludacrium created by the ludicrous powers of play?
Let´s take MMXXI as a random event in a timeline of infinite play in which the former battlefields of the game world doesn't necessarily require competing one another anymore and the simulated area of the game just asks us to be species of play. The authencity of the game experiences, so it seems has completely shifted to the players and offers them a multitude of identities.
MMXXI takes the player to an inconspicuous casino in the heart of Kreuzberg, a hermetic atmosphere for habitual play, a blind spot for the ambassadors of gamification who had praised players as super-empowered hopeful individuals with urgent optimism and extreme motivation. Here a group of permanent players, represented by the skins and props of their game characters, migrated from various game servers to an abandoned urban offline retreat, a temporary shelter to stimulate the magic circles of play with postapocalyptic campfires in the former temples of automated play.
Visitors are invited to pick up the props and identities of different players to keep up the magic circle in an immersive atmosphere of play.
An installation by Tracey Snelling with line wobblers by Robin Baumgarten and game characters created by Maya Ben David, Naomi Bisley, Olga Mikh Fedorova, Ed Fornieles, Isabella Fürnkäs, Else (Twin) Gabriel, Grete Gabriel, Hulda Ros Gudnadottir, Tarren Johnson, Tom Kobialka and Farkhondeh Shahroudi
MMXXI
Opening : August 11th, 7 pm, Duration : August 11th- September 9th 2018
Kreuzberg Pavillon, Naunynstraße 53, 10999 Berlin
Opening hours : Mon.-Thu. 5-9 pm and by appointment
Curated by Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm
“Infinite players cannot say when their game began, nor do they care. They do not care for the reason that their game is not bonded by time. Indeed, the only purpose of the game is to prevent it from coming to an end, to keep everyone in play.”
08.09.2018, 14.00 h - 09.09.2018 13.00 h
An inconspicuous casino in the heart of Kreuzberg, a formerly hermetic atmosphere for habitual play has turned into a 23 hours open access to an Infinite Game. Players enter the game by choosing a character of the exhibition and join a collective reading and interpretation of the book “Finite and Infinite Games” by James P. Carse. The game can be entered and left at any time.
The Infinite Game is set within the background of Deep Nation, a Live Action Roleplay Game designed by Omsk Social Club.
Venue:
Kreuzberg Pavillon
Naunynstraße 53
10999 Berlin
Reading material : http://wtf.tw/ref/carse.pdf
Schedule:
08.09.2021
14:00 h (Paragraph 01-04)
What are the limits of a game?
15:00 h (Paragraph 05-09)
Are rules oppressive and inhibit the play?
16:00 h (Paragraph 10-13)
How far do we go to have others act in complicity with us?
17:00 h (Paragraph 14-17)
What does education mean in a game?
18:00 h (Paragraph 18-21)
What does the achievement of titles mean?
19:00 h (Paragraph 22-24)
How do players die in a game?
20:00 h (Paragraph 25-28)
Does playing antagonize reality?
21:00 h (Paragraph 29-31)
Which term could stand in contrast to “power”?
22:00 h (Paragraph 32-37)
What do games have in common with politics and culture?
23:00 h (Paragraph 38-41)
Is property theatrical?
09.09.2021
00:00 (Paragraph 42-50)
Can someone be free by opposing another?
01:00 h (Paragraph 51-53)
Interlude
02:00 h (Paragraph 54-56)
What does the audience mean to a player?
03:00 h (Paragraph 57-62)
What is the matter of touch?
04:00 h (Paragraph 63-66)
What does a world mean in a game?
05:00 h (Paragraph 67-69)
Do games consume or generate time?
06:00 h (Paragraph 70-73)
Is nature a good opponent?
07:00 h (Paragraph 74-79)
Has language become the ultimate prize?
08:00 h (Paragraph 80-83)
Interlude
09:00 h (Paragraph 84-86)
How to play with machinery?
10:00 h (Paragraph 87-89)
Who´s playing in the garden?
11:00 h (Paragraph 90-93)
What´s unveiled by waste?
12:00 h (Paragraph 94-96)
Interlude
13:00 h (Paragraph 97-100)
Are players actors?
Hosting Players:
Sam Beca, April Gertler, Natasja Loutchko, Alexander Norton, Acqua Traslucida, Vaida Stepanovaite
Characters by:
Maya Ben David, Naomi Bisley, Olga Mikh Fedorova, Ed Fornieles, Isabella Fürnkäs, Else (Twin) Gabriel, Grete Gabriel, Hulda Ros Gudnadottir, Omsk Social Club, Tarren Johnson, Tom Kobialka, Farkhondeh Shahroudi
Setup: Tracey Snelling
Line Wobblers: Robin Baumgarten
Eloise Bonneviot
Welcome to the Feminist Gaming Group!
The Feminist Gaming Group is organising nights of intense multi-player gaming session
for beginners. The sessions are semi-private, on RSVP only and are tailored for people
with little knowledge of video games. The composition of the group will vary depending on
the game played.
A Feminist Gaming session will last all night and participants will sleep on location.
This Session will take place Saturday 22nd of September at Kreuzberg Pavillon in Berlin.
For the first session, we are going to play Fortnite Battle Royale, a free online multiplayer
game.
You will be required to bring your laptop and a mouse.
You will be expected to sleep on location.
You will bring sweets, sodas and all the trashy food you can think of.
This event is for people that identify as women and non-binary. Cis-men are also welcome
as long as they are beginners in gaming, and in particular beginners in Fortnite Battle
Royale.
Please RSVP to : eloise.bonneviot@gmail.com
Greeting and with lots of <3
The Feminist Battle Royale Gaming Group ist taking place within the frameworks of the
ongoing Kreuzberg Pavillon Project IS IT A GAME?, a series of playable situations where
the practices of playful artists and game makers intersect within experimental exhibition
formats. IS IT A GAME? is curated by Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm and funded by by the
Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin.
Kreuzberg Pavillon
Naunynstraße 53
10999 Berlin
A reaction to Escape Games by Lucinda Dayhew & Dafna Maimon
with Keturah Cummings, Nicole Degenhardt, Hannah Dougherty, Adam Fearon, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Kathi Hofer, William Newman-Wise, Rocco Ruglio-Misurell, Simon Speiser, Claudia Zweifel.
Sound : Nathan Gray
Opening Part 1: 12.10.2018, 6pm
Opening Part 2: 19.10.2018, 6pm
Open : 15.10.2018 - 12.11.2018 , 4pm – 8pm and by appointment (info@kreuzbergpavillon.de).
Kreuzberg Pavillon
Naunynstraße 53
10999 Berlin
Cooperative game theory is about rejecting the competition principle in favour of a common goal. Compared to competitive games, the share of cooperative games on the gaming market is still small. In the form of team-building seminars, cooperative games have found their way into the common social imperative, in which one must prove oneself in the job market as a strong team player. The new commercial utilisation of community has long since passed through the secluded forest parcour as a natural location for team building seminars into specially designed escape rooms where, within a given time, solving puzzles together paves the way out of a building with many rooms. But do games that constitute their own physical space have to be based on overcoming that very space? With an extended understanding of space through games it may be possible to achieve an idea of performative spaces. Today’s development of games indicates a perception of space that can be actively produced and simulated.
For Kreuzberg Pavillon’s new episode of IS IT A GAME? Lucinda Dayhew created a setting based on a collaborative live action play. While in escape games players have to work quickly as a team to solve riddles or puzzles in order to crack the codes to get out of the room, Dayhew’s setting offers the players a room reflecting themselves with repetitive loops, knots and twists.
The first part of Oops, Hoops on October 12th 2018 will introduce the setting of the play. Repetitive loops will be reinforced both sonically and via visual loop pattern motifs in the installation/setting across three rooms : The Void, The Green Room and Figure 8.
In the second part on October 19th 2018, Dafna Maimon will activate the setting with the game “Oops, Hoops”, developed specifically for - and turning the space into - a somewhat functioning escape room. In this doughnut like universe a cast of performers stuck in awkward behavioral loops and their own solipsist realities, will provide the audience with verbal clues and choreographies allowing for “jumping through hoops” as a form of dysfunctional collective escape entertainment.
Oops, Hoops is a co-production of Lucinda Dayhew, Dafna Maimon and Kreuzberg Pavillon in the framework of the series IS IT A GAME? curated by Heiko Pfreundt and Lisa Schorm.
Special thanks to Carrick Bell, Lukas Troberg and Gregor Haase (Mission Accepted)
with Harun Farocki
23.02.2019, 8pm - 01am
Kreuzberg Pavillon
Naunynstraße 53
10999 Berlin
In his last major work, the video series Parallel I-IV (2012-2014), Harun Farocki dealt with the history of computer graphics. The first video games of the 1980s, which consisted only of horizontal and vertical lines, were shown by Farocki in the course of a technical development, that continued to focus on certain forms of photorealism. Parallel I-IV shows how computer-generated animations are replacing photography and film, which have been the leading media of society for over a hundred years, not only for information and entertainment, but also for scientific research and documentation. In extension of these reproduction techniques, which are associated with concepts of objectivity and contemporaneity, computer animations (the more generative algorithms are used) are now occupied with turning the image of the found appearance into an ideal-typical one. Using the example of trees and bushes, water, fire and clouds, Farocki compares the development of surfaces and colorations in computer animation images and thus shows how within thirty years a separate history of reality effects has emerged.
Harun Farocki’s PARALLEL I-IV is presented as part of Kreuzberg Pavillon’s ongoing Program of IS IT A GAME?, a series of playable situations where the practices of playful artists and game makers intersect within experimental exhibition formats. IS IT A GAME? is curated by Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm and funded by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin.
with Surya Gied and Constanza Mendoza
09.03.2019, 8pm - 01am
Kreuzberg Pavillon
Naunynstraße 53
10999 Berlin
In their joint work for IS IT A GAME?, Surya Gied and Constanza Mendoza create a game concept based on painting that deals with psycho-geographical experiences of spatial divisions, their hegemonic properties and consequences of territoriality. The playing fields that emerge from the various colour surfaces form their own topography that is added to the picture afterwards, temporarily transforming the canvas of the painting into a game board for the duration of the evening and the exhibition itself into an evening of board games.
Surya Gied explores, in the form of painting, installation and drawing, the feeling of fragmentation and the associated abstraction of one’s own identity. In many of her exhibitions, she extracts and duplicates individual elements from her works, which she places in current connections with the respective temporal-spatial environment in a performative and installative manner.
For Constanza Mendoza, board games are cognitive interfaces to an environment that, on the one hand, shapes the subjective characteristics of the player, but on the other hand also addresses a subjectivity that allows us to learn various personal skills in order to participate in the (game) world. Her work is directed as a critical challenge at existing bodies of knowledge.
A Spatial Turn is part of the current Kreuzberg Pavillon project IS IT A GAME?, a series of playable situations in which the practices of artists and game makers meet in experimental exhibition formats. IS IT A GAME? is curated by Heiko Pfreundt & Lisa Schorm and kindly supported by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
You have to imagine Geronto Games as the opposite of a modern, immersive game world. The hidden sandbox principle with which todays Open World computer games give their users certain freedom of action and allow them to become their own player personalities does not apply to people who play Geronto Games. Geronto Games deal with the construction of birdhouses from flower pots, appear as memory training, but also as time that concentrates only on feeling itself and turns to the small-scale recognition, ordering, sorting and remembering of everyday things. For IS IT A GAME? Verena Issel has developed her own spatial form within the exhibition space, in which she will further intensify Geronto Games as an offer of occupation.
Geronto Games is developed by Verena Issel in collaboration with Lisa Schorm and Heiko Pfreundt for the series IS IT A GAME? at Kreuzberg Pavilion and is realized together with Lukas Troberg. IS IT A GAME? is a series of experimental exhibitions about today’s playing, realized with artists, game developers and gamers.