^for translation use the globe button ^

NO GOD MODE: Play as Resistance transformierte am 26.06.26 den Club in einen Spielplatz, der Gaming, spielerische Kunst und Clubkultur miteinander verband.

NO GOD MODE: Play as Resistance ist ein Projekt von

in/significant other: lab for space-making & time stretching

mit Ausstellungsbeiträgen von:

Babak Ahteshamipour, Noah Destrée, Gökçe Göbüt, Alexander Hackl, Mert Hadimlioğlu, Tamás Hegyi, Maxim Shchapov, Janine Scheer-Erb, Boie Thomsen, Sarah Fichtinger, Total Refusal & Nikola Supuković, Eperke Remetei-Filep & Laura Pega

Kuration: Janine Scheer-Erb

Diese Nacht hat im Club folgende Spuren hinterlassen:

Werkbeschreibungen:

Wanne, Eingang Ende der Stufen, rechts

TITLE: CHILDREN OF SATURN

NAME: Boie Thomsen (@strawboie)
FORMAT: video game

YEAR: 2025

DESCRIPTION: CHILDREN OF SATURN is a coming-of-age story that lets players control a gang of American teenagers as they record themselves skateboarding, spraying graffiti, playing gigs with their band and generally causing chaos in the suburbs. In between gameplay sections, the game uses real-life footage of climate catastrophes to break with the fiction and emphasize the severity of the climate crisis.

Wanne, links neben der Bar

TITLE: Machinist Auxiliaries, Needles of Needless Emphasises

NAME: Babak Ahteshamipour (@babakahteshamipour)
FORMAT: Machinima/video with original music & text, 04:43

YEAR: 2024

DESCRIPTION: Machinist Auxiliaries, Needles of Needless Emphasises features decaying gameplay footage of Twisted Metal: Black (2001), a combat game where vehicular warfare and explosive chaos reign supreme, in combination with AI generated footage of quarry explosions. It underlines the role of machines as auxiliary forces in the context of war and functions as a critical gaze to dissect the symbiotic conjunction between technology, warfare, and extractivism.

This machinima is part of Babak Ahteshamipour`s 2024 album entitled Violent Violins Exposed released on the independent label Jollies (Brooklyn, NYC). Scan the QR Code.

Deck, Bildschirme (4 Filme im Loop )

TITLE: i am ship

NAME: Gökçe Göbüt (@alnima)
FORMAT: video 11"24'

YEAR: 2026

DESCRIPTION:

A scooter born in Taiwan wonders

if the island is the whole world

and what lies beyond the sea.

Mandarin poem by 煮雪的人 Zhuxue Deren

@zhuxuederen.eth

TITLE: Bed Work

NAME: Tamás Hegyi (@tamashegyi)
FORMAT: short film 5’57”

YEAR: 2025

DESCRIPTION: Bed Work is a short video work that examines the absurdity of remote working, focusing on the blurring of personal and corporate digital spaces. It explores issues of emotional regulation, internalised work ethics and control mechanisms through the lens of the existential crisis of a regular working day.

TITLE: Minuswelt

NAME: Sarah Fichtinger, Total Refusal & Nikola Supuković (@sarah_z0rra , @totalrefusal, @chegusta)
FORMAT: machinima

YEAR: 2025

DESCRIPTION: Im wörtlichen Sinne spielend, legt das österreichische Künstler:innenkollektiv Total Refusal (gegründet 2018) ideologische Strukturen frei, die sich unter der realistischen Illusion von Computerspielen verbergen. Zusammen mit Sarah Fichtinger (geb. 1990) eignet es sich das Anfang 2025 veröffentlichte Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 an und greift mit Unterstützung des Modders (Spiele-Modifizierers) Nikola Supukovic in die digitalen Texturen ein. Die Handlung des Spiels, das mit einer besonders geschichtstreuen Darstellung wirbt, ist in der bäuerlichen Gesellschaft des späten Mittelalters angesiedelt. Inspiriert durch neuere historische Forschungen konzentriert sich Minuswelt auf die Repräsentation der Frauen und die utopischen Räume der Frühen Neuzeit. Denn die Privatisierung von Gemeingütern und die Verdrängung von Frauen und ihrer Arbeit in den häuslichen Raum bildeten die Basis für den aufkommenden Kapitalismus zu dieser Zeit. Wie werden die Rolle der Frauen und ihre damaligen Lebensbedingungen im gegenwärtigen Massenmedium Videospiel dargestellt?

TITLE: untitled

NAME: Mert Hadimlioğlu
FORMAT: video

YEAR: 2024

DESCRIPTION: This political game is based on a poem by Refaat Al-Areer, a Palestinian professor, activist and father who, along with his daughter, was killed in a targeted attack on 6 December 2023 due to his long-standing political and literary activism.

The game uses real footage and recreates it in 3D to show what has been used, said and done in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people since 1948, and it calls on the player to expose those war crimes and demand accountability from all states and individuals who aided, facilitated and instigated this genocide.

Link to fundraiser:

Billboards outside

TITLE: Play as Resistance

NAME: in/significant other (@in_significant_other.lab), Janine Scheer-Erb (@janine.sche.erb)
FORMAT: billboards
YEAR: 2026

When playful mechanics are exploited for profit, recruitment, surveillance and warfare, ‘play’ must be re-defended: gamification makes work more efficient. Drone warfare enables killing via an interface. Right-wing networks poach members from gaming communities, and army posters advertise in ‘Call of Duty’ style. Meanwhile, CEOs of major tech conglomerates reign with absolute power, whilst real bodies remain exposed to real crises.

in/significant other - lab for space-making & time-stretching challenges this technofascism. Here, ‘Play as Resistance’ does not mean withdrawing from reality. Playing means making its rules visible. It means recognising power relations as systems, switching roles, forming alliances, experimenting with sabotage and making other worlds imaginable.

Billdboards inside

TITLE: excerpts from the garden

NAME: <3> children >3< (@call us on the landline)
FORMAT: renderings on print with original poetry

YEAR: 2057

DESCRIPTION: me when people ask what children in the garden is:

“An uplifting of the heart surpassing all uplifting.

I cannot describe it; if you can, say on!

Ecstasy and words beyond all ecstatic words;—

Immersion in the glory of the Lady of glory!

Immersion wherefrom was no extrication,—

As it were identification with the Very Ocean!” -Rumi

Wanne, rechts neben Bühne

TITLE: Kaugummihexomat

NAME: screamsfromthekitchen (@screamsfromthekitchen)
FORMAT: analog game installation, zine, bubblegum machine

YEAR: 2024

DESCRIPTION: Kaugummihexomat is a screamsfromthekitchen analogue solo game installation consisting of a hand-drawn zine and a bubblegum machine. Players are invited to reflect on their own experiences of anger and rage before receiving a piece of bubblegum from the machine and being left to wonder what exactly they have been chewing on all this time. The game culminates in a collective ritual: participants add their chewed and spat-out gum to a growing wall, creating a shared monument to personal memories, emotions, and transformation.

Wanne, zwischen Toiletten

Marina, Lichtinstallation

TITLE: One Dimensional Dreams Of A New World

NAME: Alexander Hackl (@alexandergruehn)
FORMAT: interactive LED installation

YEAR: 2026

DESCRIPTION: 2 Players simultaneously turn the locks in the color of the obstacle until it is gone and you can finally touch.

Wanne, rechts neben Bar

TITLE: My Body is a (sex) machine

NAME: Noah Destrée (@noanal_e)
FORMAT: installation

YEAR: 2025

DESCRIPTION: My Body is a (sex) machine is a project born from a search for playfulness in adulthood. It began with a simple question: Where does playfulness go as we grow older? How does something so central to our development become relegated to a "time-wasting" activity? Do we ever really stop playing? I eventually realised that many adults reconnect with play through sex and fantasy. When I think about it, sex is a form of play. It is one of the most elaborate systems of play we have invented, with its own rules, codes, costumes, toys, and machines. This led me to discover the world of sex machines: a vast array of tools and devices becoming increasingly sophisticated and specialised. As these technologies continue to evolve, the question inevitably arises : "are we all meant to become sex cyborgs"?

NO GOD MODE: Play as Resistance bespielt den Club als widerständigen Playground. Zwischen Gaming, Playful Art und Clubkultur entsteht ein Raum, in dem Regeln untersucht, gebrochen, umgeschrieben und neu verteilt werden. Die Ausstellung fragt: Wer darf spielen? Wer hat die Ressourcen und die Freiheit, sich auf das Spiel einzulassen? Kann das Spiel widerständig sein?

Wenn spielerische Mechaniken für Profit, Rekrutierung, Überwachung und Kriegsführung genutzt werden, muss Play neu verteidigt werden: Gamification macht Arbeit effizienter. Drohnenkrieg ermöglicht Töten via Interface. Rechte Netzwerke fischen in Gaming-Communities und Bundeswehr-Plakate werben im Call of Duty Style. Währenddessen regieren CEOs großer Tech-Konzerne allmächtig, während reale Körper realen Krisen ausgesetzt bleiben.

No God Mode widerspricht diesem Technofaschmismus. Play as Resistance heißt hier nicht, sich aus der Realität zurückzuziehen. Spielen heißt, ihre Regeln sichtbar zu machen. Es heißt, Machtverhältnisse als Systeme zu erkennen, Rollen zu wechseln, Allianzen zu bilden, Sabotagen zu erproben und andere Welten vorstellbar zu machen.

Die ausgestellten Arbeiten erzählen von der Suche nach Freundschaft in einer apokalyptischen Welt. Sie untersuchen Maschinen als Hilfskräfte von Krieg, Extraktion und Zerstörung. Sie verwandeln analoge Spielmechaniken in einen feministischen Akt, betrachten Hustle Culture als erschöpfende Spielfelder der Gegenwart, und folgen einer Sehnsucht nach dem Meer, nach Übersetzung, Bewegung und einem neuen Horizont.

in/significant other

in/significant other is a lab for space-making and time-stretching founded and curated by artists & game designers Gökçe Göbüt and Janine Scheer-Erb. Methods such as speculative practice, worldbuilding, and playful interventions serve the purpose of collective care: to give significance to the other and to one another.

Space-Making is understood as creating and upholding a magic circle for and together with the participants as a way to create a temporary autonomous zone in which new rules can be playtested. Time-Stretching is understood as any action that tempers with the perceived fabric of time, making a second feel like forever.

We frame play as a tool for training social imagination: to make existing rules visible, allowing us to prototype alternatives. Our lab bundles game art, sound culture, performance, theoretical/fictional writing, and experimental mechanics into gatherings for like-minded artists, where participants become active co-creators.

Bios:

Janine Scheer-Erb (JES) is a multimedia artist, game designer, poet, and curator. Her concept-driven practice moves between installation and performance, engaging internet subcultures, algorithms, and poetic encounter. Her work creates intimacy through vulnerability, often addressing dark themes with softness and humor. With a queer-feminist lens, she foregrounds care, collectivity, and play.

Gökçe Göbüt Constantly missing the Mediterranean Sea, and thinking and playing with the things in between her and the sea. She is a transmedia artist, game designer, and one of many children growing up in a borderless and cornerless garden. Her practice moves between interactive worlds, experimental mechanics, various forms of knowledge, and speculation on embodied information transfer. Rooted in queer methodologies of ambiguity, resilience and care, she explores the possibilities of illegibility, failure and intermedial and multidimensional translations. She continually seeks and creates virtual spaces where she can put things she is curious about to expand their edges, stretch and stack their forms to see, hear and speculate the generative spaces appearing.

Babak Ahteshamipour is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, musician, graphic designer, and writer/researcher based between Vienna (AT) and Athens (GR). His works expand across many disciplines such as gaming, 3D, video, graphic design, music, and writing that collide into unison ludic subjectivity, machinic affect, chronopolitics, the materiality of Cyberspace, and post-human coexistence, delivered through the lens of gaming and internet culture.

Boie Thomsen (he/him) is an independent digital artist specializing in experimental video games. After completing his MSc in Game Engineering he started developing games in 2020 and is currently studying Experimental Game Cultures at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. While at first glance, his games play like traditional video games, they are surprisingly experimental and political. Their goal is not to entertain, but to evoke empathy. To earnestly convey experiences through interactivity. To let someone walk through and interact with pieces of another person's mind as a means of expressing what can't be put into words.

screamsfromthekitchen is the Vienna-based game art duo consisting of Laura Pega and Eperke Remetei-Filep. Since 2023, they have been creating experimental games, zines, and play experiences that combine storytelling, game design, and artistic research. Their collaborative practice is driven by curiosity, experimentation, and a shared interest in the transformative potential of play. Their work creates intimate spaces for self-reflection, emotional exploration, and interpersonal connection, often taking the form of playful rituals that blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. Working with themes such as female rage, identity, love, and societal expectations, they transform everyday objects into vessels for storytelling and interaction. Through unconventional game mechanics and narrative worldbuilding, screamsfromthekitchen invites players to engage critically with themselves and the systems that shape their lives.

Nikola Supuković ist Medienkünstler, Medientheoretiker und Vermittler. Seine künstlerische Arbeit lässt sich beschreiben als toxic situationship mit Computerspielen. Diese Praxis umfasst die Programmierung, das Modifizieren von Videospielen, Game Development, Installationen und die Auseinandersetzung mit digitalen Kulturen.

Sarah Fichtinger ist Künstlerin, Kunstpädagogin und Forschende an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Ihre Praxis verbindet künstlerische und theoretische Ansätze, um feministische und materialistische Perspektiven auf Geschichte und Gegenwart sichtbar zu machen. In ihren Filmprojekten, textilen Arbeiten und Illustrationen befasst sie sich mit den Verflechtungen von Kunst, Widerstand, Politik und Emotionen.

Leonhard Müllner (*1987 in Graz) ist ein in Wien lebender österreichischer Filmemacher, Medienkünstler und Spieleforscher. Er studierte Bildende Kunst und Medienkunst in Linz, Leipzig und Wien und erhielt 2023 ein Doktorat in Kulturwissenschaften am Institut für Kunst & Kulturwissenschaften an der Kunstuniversität Linz bei Prof. Dr. Helmut Lethen. Müllner verfügt über über Internationale Ausstellungs- und Residenzerfahrung. Seine Arbeiten wurden mit fast 70 Preisen vielfach ausgezeichnet, darunter mit dem Europäischen Filmpreis (2024), dem Diagonale Kurzdokumentarfilmpreis (2022) und dem Regiepreis für den Besten Kurzdokumentarfilm im Locarno Film Festival (2023). Seit 2024 lehrt er zudem „Erzähltheorie“ an der Kunstuniversität Linz am Institut für Bildung und Medien und publiziert regelmäßig zu Erzähltheorie in Videospielen.