Living Room_KHG
by Kleine Humboldt Galerie
there is a monster in my room (Kleine Humboldt Galerie)
Unlock the door. Take off shoes. Sit on the couch. Turn on the console. The familiar activation sound plays. Pick up the controller. Start the game. The room is darkened. Colored light shines from the corners of the room. Red green purple blue. The night is young and in the world of games the clock ticks differently anyway. It repeats its shortened course. Slow motion and incredible speeds become the status quo. The caffeine rises in the head, because the next round, the next level, the next opponent, the next need demands attention. Death and life are only a few keystrokes apart. Rebirth is thought of. Finally there again.
Regardless of whether it's a chaotic children's room, a lovingly furnished man-cave or a highly professional streaming studio: in the gaming room, you're usually alone. The bulky office chair at the desk only leaves room for one gamer, the curved monitor only unfolds its full effect from one angle. Nevertheless, gamers are not lonely: in games or chats, they are in constant exchange, often in competition. Numerous accessories promise better performance: gaming mice, keyboards, chairs, tables, headsets, even specialized energy drinks or snacks are offered.
High-gloss furniture and technology in billowing RGB light are far from being the reality in many gamers' rooms. For many, having a dedicated gaming room is wishful thinking. Instead, a corner of the bedroom or living room is dedicated to the hobby. The passion for videogames is not only expressed in expensive equipment, but also in fan articles. At the same time, personal and everyday objects also find their way into the idealized, sterile gaming room.
What role does gaming and its space play in our society? If we follow Johan Huizinga's Homo ludens, gaming is the basic constitution of man - only through gaming does he develop culture and meaning. According to him, the space of play is a space in which the framework of action is already determined - but within the framework man can try himself out. Without play, man would not be who he is today. Progress is told from the now to the future, but the future must be tested in play. The playing human being is thus essential for the human being itself and its future.
But the question arises whether gaming follows the idea of Homo ludens? What at first glance appears to be a lonely, isolated and unworldly activity has much more in it. The gaming room can function in community with friends or alone. Interaction takes place both in games and side by side on the couch. It is a space that functions in both two and three dimensions, that is both corporeal and incorporeal. But it is always also a place that reproduces the power dynamics of society, because "the real subject of the game [...] is not the player, but the game itself" (Gadamer). Playing always means being played. And the more seamlessly the game conveys itself to the human being, the more invisible the being played becomes. The only question is how playing and being played are evaluated.
Can the gamer use the possibilities of the game to reformulate her existence and create utopias? Or is she played, in which each of her steps is already thought and each immersion in another world follows the same monotonous principle? We get to the bottom of these questions. We open the solitary Gaming Room to a large audience. The works on display deal with gaming or use video games as a medium.
In Rhythm Zero Los Santos (2019), Jonas Blume walks in the footsteps of Marina Abramovic's performance, in which viewers could use a variety of objects on her for 6 hours. The performance increasingly escalated and nearly ended with her death. Blume re-stages this performance in the world of GTA Online, which classically has few rules when it comes to excess of violence. Death and life are closely timed here and are reproduced through ever new forms of violence.
In their role-playing simulation "Limboship", Arwin Ahmadpur and Dasha Kozlova depict situations that people with migration status have to experience every day. The game focuses on the experiences that international students have to go through at the National Immigration Office and is based on actual events, testimonies and interviews.
Marta Vovk repeatedly uses brand logos in her work, combining them with characters from anime and children's series. MNST represents the logo of the energy drink Monster, which is a cliché of the gaming scene.
