The Mycological Twist (Eloïse Bonneviot & Anne de Boer) / HAU

Over 20 million people worldwide play “The Elder Scrolls® Online”. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is set 1,000 years ago in a fantasy world where players go on quests to slay monsters and collect treasures. The MMORPG is known for its open approach to character building, offering countless possibilities in designing your own avatar, including the option of non-human features. For the third time, HAU welcomes Berlin-based artists Eloïse Bonneviot and Anne de Boer to conduct workshops on gaming, followed by conversations with digital artist Gabriel Massan, and others. During the workshops, participants will experiment with character creation in the “The Elder Scrolls® Online” universe and explore their classes, customisations, and alliances. Besides highlighting avatar development as a tool for utopian worlds, the conversations will cover artistic research on role-playing games, world-building, and the medium of video games. What are the different roles that are assigned when playing? Drawing from this experience, how do character building and avatars reflect on our different contemporary worries?

8.12.
Politics Behind Character Building
17:00 – 19:00: Workshop
20:00: Talk with The Mycological Twist, Fantasia Malware and Sarah Friend
On the first “Quadrat Sampling“ evening, Eloïse Bonneviot & Anne de Boer invite the participants to develop their own character in “The Elder Scrolls® Online” during a workshop. The second part of the evening will be open to the public and consist of a talk with artist Sarah Friend. The conversation will revolve around the politics behind character building, avatars and online personas. 

9.12.
Collective Actions of the Characters
17:00 – 19:00: Workshop
20:00: Talk with The Mycological Twist, OMSK Social Club and Gabriel Massan
The second evening of “Quadrat Sampling” will start with a workshop based on the different playable characters in “The Elder Scrolls® Online”. During the workshop, the audience will try to achieve different micro-quests and collective activities. This will be followed by a discussion open to the public between artists OMSK Social Club and Gabriel Massan. Looking at their experience and game design, how do they use the different assets and pitfalls of character making and inhabiting in their respective practices?

Sarah Friend is an artist and software developer based in Berlin. In 2023, she was a research fellow at Summer of Protocols, led by Venkatesh Rao and the Ethereum Foundation. In 2022, she was a visiting professor at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (New York). She is represented by Galerie Nagel Draxler (Cologne, Berlin, Munich), and has exhibited at and worked with MoMA (New York), Centre Pompidou (Metz), Kunsthaus Zürich, HEK (Basel), Haus der Kunst (Munich), ArtScience Museum (Singapore), Albright Knox Museum (Buffalo), and KW Institute (Berlin) among others.

Gabriel Massan (born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Working with with 3D animation, digital sculpture, games, sound, and interactive installations, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Massan has presented talks and conversations at institutions including La Biennale di Venezia, Art Basel Miami, University College London, Royal College Of Arts and Institut Français. They have created significant commissions with Serpentine Arts Technologies (London, 2022-3), Bangkok Biennale (2022), The Photographers’ Gallery (London, 2022), and X Museum (Beijing, 2022).

Fantasia Malware is an experimental video game label and collective based in Berlin. The group develop and publish video games, live performances and chaotic, corrupt software. The recent collective projects include “SEX! At Alexanderplatz”, “The Life of Saint Fiona Bianco Xena” and “Orchid Collecter”. In 2022 they produced the four-part event series “Fantasia Malware Presents”: a tiny cross section of the fizzing underbelly of video games, a late capitalist medium wrenched free from the grasp of the marketing team to make boundless alien dream worlds. Fantasia Malware is Jira Duguid, Chloê Langford and Gabriel Helfenstein. They worked together with the National Gallery (United Kingdom), the Royal Opera House Audience Labs (United Kingdom), Transmediale (Germany), A Maze Festival (Germany), Sickhouse (Netherlands) and ACUD Macht Neu (Germany), among others.

OMSK Social Club is a collective whose artistic practice is created between two lived worlds – one of life as we know it and the other of role play. OMSK Social Club works closely with networks of viewers, everything is unique and unrehearsed. They have exhibited in various places such as Martin Gropius Bau, HKW, Light Art Space (Berlin), Volksbühne Berlin, Haus der Elektronischen Künste (Basel), Stroom den Haag. The collective was already presented at HAU during the festival “Spy on Me #2” (2020) as part of the programme by dgtl fmnsm.