Mario Mu: Walkthrough [18.04. – 04.05.2018.]
Opening: April 18th at 8 PM
Curator: Lovro Japundžić
The innocent gaming experience is now part of the past. Video games have become a set of rules, carefully structured to produce an affective impact on the player who soon becomes emotionally invested, unconsciously catering to game developers. The player takes over the role of a performer within the system that goes far beyond the gaming world. Critic and media theorist McKenzie Wark in his book GAM3R 7H30RY uses the term “gamespace” to describe our modern social condition, comparing algorithmic codification and unequal power relations in video games to the exploitative logic of capitalist production. In his view, the standardization, optimization and analytic potential of gaming interface serve as mechanisms that primarily compensate the agents of power. Thus, it is no wonder that capitalism has appropriated and commodified play within leisure time and personal life, a phenomenon that Julian Kucklich named “play-bor”.
A sense of community in an offline and online world can be achieved through habits. What is suitable we learn from others forming unified collective body. “Walkthrough” is a project by the artist Mario Mu who exposes hack values and the emancipatory potential of habits in the form of a role-playing game. It centers on the game with the focus on a specific set of habits by a group of eight participants who inhabited the same space. By taking turns and following the previously given instructions about the confines of the game space, the players successively repeat their specific movement pattern in order to achieve the sense of an automated habit. Actually, while the players are doing their best to follow the game rules, another process is happening – the game character’s avatar is in a constant state of becoming, exposing the possibility for an autonomous movement beyond any common ideology. By performing oneself each character creates the need for a new update within the game space. Instead of waiting for the new code to be mastered, they translate the community-owned and tailored game character to an extended video game environment. The role-playing game gives players the opportunity to switch between different personas in a game that is exempt from the digital cleanse.
Mario Mu (1987) works with the extended gaming platforms constructed as research projects. His practice incorporates 3D animation and performance often combined with sound design and painting processes. Most recently he has been working on a series of LARP events as a game designer and performer in UdK Berlin and Silent Green, PLAY CO. in London and Pakhuis de Zwijger in Amsterdam. He received his MFA in Berlin from the University of the Arts (UdK) Berlin, Class of Hito Steyerl in 2017, and in Zagreb from the from the Academy of Fine Arts BA in 2015 and the Faculty of Graphic Arts MA in 2011. In the period 2010-2017 he has been mainly using the name Mario Udženija exhibiting his projects in Cologne, Berlin, London, Split, Strassbourg and Zagreb and has been awarded for his achievements on several occasions including FOHS Founadaton 2012, Essl Art Award 2015 and University of Zagreb, Dean’s award for exellence 2015.
Walkthrough is supported by the Ministry of culture of Republic of Croatia and City of Zagreb. General sponsor is INA – Industrija nafte d.d. Work of Miroslav Kraljević Gallery is supported by Kultura nova Foundation.
