Artist Talk, Performance
Artist Talk: Total Refusal
A livestreamed in-game artist talk with members of Total Refusal
Join us on YouTube for a live-streamed artist talk between members of the Total Refusal collective and Goethe-Institut New York’s curator, Zachary B. Feldman. We will discuss Total Refusal’s filmmaking practice, Marxist politics, activism, coded labor, and more from within the universe of Red Dead Redemption 2 – the setting of both Superwonder (2021) and Hardly Working (2022), which are on view at Goethe-Institute New York from March 14 – April 25, 2024. You will have a chance to submit your questions in real time!
The pseudo-marxist media guerilla Total Refusal is a collective of artists, researchers, and filmmakers who upcycle the resources of mainstream video games to create political narratives in the form of videos, interventions, performances, and lectures. Their work has been screened at over 250 film and art festivals and exhibited at various spaces. Since their foundation in 2018, Total Refusal have been awarded with more than 50 prizes and honorary mentions.
Adrian Jonas Haim (*1991 Vienna) does film and politics in Vienna and elsewhere. Studies of Political Science & Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Involved in various writing, music and art projects with a focus on marxism and ideology in cross media culture. Former editor at MALMOE Zeitung, programmer for film series on politics of remembrance (Filmclub Tacheles, Vienna Jewish Filmfestival, This Human World Filmfestival). Haim joined Total Refusal in 2020.
Robin Klengel (*1988 in Graz), lives and works as an artist and cultural anthropologist in 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-chairman of the interdisciplinary art and culture space Forum Stadtpark in Graz. He co-founded the collective in 2018.
Michael Stumpf (* 1985 in Wels), studied Philosophy in Vienna as well as Media Culture and Art Theories in Linz (unfinished). His research interlaces a background in phenomenology with media and culture semiotics, analyzing the relevance and operating mode of popular cultural tropes. He works as an artist, designer and coder. Stumpf co-founded the collective in 2018.
Zachary B. Feldman is a curator, writer, and scholar of media art and is currently the visual arts and program curator for the Goethe-Institut New York. He holds a joint-Ph.D. in Comparative Media and German Studies from Vanderbilt University and was a Helena Rubenstein Fellow in Curatorial Studies at the Whitney Independent Study Program from 2022-23. Feldman has previously held curatorial positions at the Frist Art Museum (Nashville, TN), Zentrum für Kunst und Medien (Karlsruhe, Germany), and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).