Talents Innovation Forum: Everyday Daylight Live In-Game Lecture Performance
Los Santos, the digital world of popular action game Grand Theft Auto V, isn’t just inspired by Los Angeles in terms of its cityscape. Like its real world counterpart, it’s also one of the most popular film sets in history: No other game has hosted as many machinimas - films recorded in video games - and game art projects.
Together with the audience, Total Refusal goes on an art walk - or rather drive - through the digital metropolis, touring the city spots which were used as film sets and performance locations. They shine a light on the practice of appropriating contemporary video games for artistic purposes and discuss the potential of art in deconstructing the mechanisms of hyperrealist media.
Strap in for a turbulent crash-course in the art of counter-playing and misusing the violent world of shooter games!
SPEAKERS
LEONHARD MULLNER
Artist/Game theorist/Lecturer, Total Refusal | AT
ROBIN KLENGEL
Artist/Cultural Anthropologist, Total Refusal | AT
MODERATED BY
IGOR SIMIĆ
Creative Director, Demagog Studio | US
TIME
Tuesday, August 19th, 2025
17:00 – 18:00 (CET)
LOCATION
CineLink Conference Room @ Swissotel
Leonhard Mullner
Leonhard Müllner lives and works in Vienna as a visual artist and media researcher. He teaches “Narratology” at the Media and Education-Department at the Art University Linz, AT. He studied Visual- and Media Art in Linz, Leipzig and Vienna and did his PhD in Game Studies / Game Art. He co-founded the collective in 2018.
Robin Klengel
Robin Klengel lives and works as an artist and cultural anthropologist in Vienna and Graz. He researches, writes texts, gives lectures and courses and makes films in the field of artistic-scientific research of urban and digital spaces. He studied cultural anthropology in Graz and Berlin. Since 2021 he is co-chairman of the interdisciplinary art and culture space Forum Stadtpark in Graz. He co-founded the collective in 2018.
Igor Simić
Igor Simic graduated from Columbia University in New York with a double-major in Film Studies and Philosophy. His short films screened at film festivals, received awards, including the 1st Prize at Loop Barcelona, and were exhibited at art institutions, such as Kunsthalle Mainz, Ulm Museum, Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, The Art Institute of Chicago, etc. Simic is represented by Gallery Anita Beckers in Frankfurt. As the creative director and CEO, Simic co-founded the gaming company Demagog Studio, which created Golf Club: Wasteland (on storefronts Golf Club: Nostalgia) that was featured by Apple in 2018 and shown at Manifesta 14. The studio created two more games in the same world: The Cub, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival 2022 and Highwater for Netflix in 2023. Simic is a tutor and moderator at Berlinale Talents and Sarajevo Talents.