Total Refusal’s latest work, Hardly Working, is shedding light on the lives of non-player characters (NPCs) in video games. The machinima, which premiered at the Locarno International Film Festival in the Summer 2022 alongside a terrific performance by the collective, explores the daily lives of these NPCs — characters that are typically in the background of video games — and the work they do to create the illusion of a bustling digital world.
With ethnographic accuracy and maniacal detail, Hardly Working follows the routines and activity patterns of NPCs, including a laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper, and a carpenter. These characters are portrayed as Sisyphus machines, trapped in a cycle of labor that is analogous to work under capitalism, with its relentless pursuit of “bullshit jobs” (David Graber).
Hardly Working has received massive critical acclaim, winning the Best Direction Award and the Junior Jury Award at the Locarno International Film Festival. It has also been screened at several other festivals around the world, including the Vancouver International Film Festival, the Black Canvas Festival de Cine Contemporáneo in Mexico, and the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Canada.
Other screenings include the Seminci - Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain, the VIENNALE in Austria, the Filmmaker Film Festival in Italy (where it won the Premio della Giuria Award), and the IKF Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur in Switzerland. Hardly Working has also been screened at the KFFK/Kurzfilmfestival Köln N°16 in Germany, the Bosphorus Film Festival in Turkey, the Uppsala International Short Film Festival in Sweden, and the PÖFF Shorts in Estonia.
Hardly Working has also won several awards, including the Best Austrian Animation ASIFA Award and Audience Award at the Best Austrian Animation Festival in Austria, the Best Screenplay Award at the Usak Film Festival in Turkey, and the Best Concept Award at the Winter Apricots: Prilep International Film Festival in Macedonia. It has also been screened at the Max Ophüls Preis in Germany, the Vilnius Internation Short Film Festival in Lithuania, the FIPA Doc International Documentary Film Festival in France, and the Stuttgarter Filmwinter in Germany.
In 2020, the Milan Machinima Festival screened How to Disappear (2020), “a game video essay on the nature of war - both real, that is, unmediated, and remediated through ludic means”, and in 2021, the collective’s short Featherfall was featured in season 01 of VRAL.
Hardly Working is a fascinating look at the lives of NPCs in video games and the commentary it offers on the nature of work under capitalism. Its success at festivals around the world suggests that audiences are interested in exploring these themes and are eager to see more from Total Refusal, a self-described pseudo-marxist media guerilla that explores and practices strategies for artistic intervention in contemporary computer games. It works with tools of appropriation and rededication of game assets.
Matteo Bittanti
Read more about Hardly Working
Read an interview with Total Refusal (2021) about Featherfall, dreams, and simulations
Read Regine Debatty’s review
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