The work
Hardly Working draws on the vast world of the game Red Dead Redemption 2, which features countless AI-controlled extras that are often overlooked by players following the intended gameplay. These non-player characters (NPCs) carry out their assigned tasks or move in their predetermined loops, creating a sense of normalcy and everyday life in the game world.
Hardly Working observes four such NPCs with ethnographic precision and considers them and their digital collaegues as Animal laborans (a term used by Hannah Arendt): A working individual whose work strengthens the status quo instead of changing it. Work is not a means to overcome social status or even societal conditions, but in fact, is the backbone of the individual’s total entanglement in capitalist work relations. Activities such as sweeping a floor or sinking nails into wood become an inconclusive and absurd performance. NPCs are Sisyphean machines, programmed to get stuck in the routines of everyday life without results. The film is a political and perhaps surprising appropriation of video game media. However, the reason it resonates with audiences is likely because they identify with these portrayals of stumbling, endearing NPCs caught up in their loops and feelings of powerlessness to enact change.
Total Refusal developed Hardly Working in 2021-22 during their residncy at Werkleitz.
Artist bio
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.The collective's themes are informed by critical game studies and social theory in an attempt to promote and popularize a counter-hegemonic left. Their work has been screened at over 300 film and art festivals and exhibited at various spaces. Since their foundation in 2018, Total Refusal have been awarded with more than 65 prizes and honorary mentions.
Members: Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner, Michael Stumpf
Credits
Funded by the European Media Arts Platform (EMAP) and hosted by Werkleitz (2021-22).
Images: courtesy of the artists.