{"id":6237,"date":"2026-08-24T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-24T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hacnumedia.org\/lets-playformance-four-artistic-ways-of-performing-video-games\/"},"modified":"2026-08-24T12:34:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-24T10:34:45","slug":"lets-playformance-four-artistic-ways-of-performing-video-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hacnumedia.org\/en\/lets-playformance-four-artistic-ways-of-performing-video-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s Play(formance)! Four Artistic Ways of Performing Video Games"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Now deeply embedded in popular culture, video games have also become a favored medium for contemporary artists. Theater directors, dancers, musicians, and visual artists are embracing them to renew the forms of performance and experiment with new ways of relating to audiences. Here are four ways of performing video games.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With nearly 3.6 billion players worldwide, video games have established themselves as the largest sector of the cultural and creative industries in terms of revenue generated.<\/a>This economic structure has gone hand in hand with the rise of esports, where professional players compete in tournaments based on perfect mastery of the rules imposed by the game. But not all video game performances pursue this ideal of optimization. Some, on the contrary, use games as a starting point for creating dissonance and new forms of expression. Where players normally seek to complete a quest, artists introduce unpredictability in order to bring an alternative perspective on the world to the surface. Role-playing games, sandbox games, and open worlds are particularly appealing in this regard. \u201cYou can customize an avatar, express yourself through skins or constructions, all of which are levers artists can play with,\u201d <\/em>explains Simon Hagemann,<\/a>a professor and researcher at the University of Strasbourg specializing in theater studies and video games. These hybrid performances therefore take many forms: some appropriate existing games and divert them from their intended uses; others use them as tools for mediation; still others transform their worlds into spaces for performance; and some choose to create their own rules of the game. Four ways of performing video games thus emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Performing inside an existing game by subverting its rules<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first category of performance consists in subverting the rules of an existing game, often an AAA title. The Austrian collective Total Refusal<\/a> has made a specialty of these forms of video game d\u00e9tournement. Sons and True Sons<\/em><\/a> created in Tom Clancy\u2019s: The Division 2.<\/em>The artists storm the U.S. Capitol in a digital version of Washington, D.C., to deliver speeches about masculinity and democracy under late capitalism. \u201cHijacking the player character is the simplest way to appropriate a video game world; it is often the starting point for any artistic intervention,\u201d<\/em> explains Leonhard M\u00fcellner, a member of the collective. \u201cThe movement constraints imposed by games force you to come up with strategies for circumventing their internal logic. The game then loses some of its seriousness and supposed coherence, gradually revealing the implicit rules that govern it.\u201d<\/em> By abandoning the mechanics intended by the developers in favor of what is known as \u201cemergent gameplay,\u201d artists invent another game within the first one. In this loot shooter built around combat and accumulation, carrying out a peaceful action already becomes an act of subversion. \u201cPerformance emerges the moment the player decides not to do what the game expects them to do,\u201d <\/em>summarizes Simon Hagemann. This is precisely what Joseph DeLappe does, who in June 2026 presented his celebrated performance Howl: Elite Force Voyager Online<\/a><\/em> at the ZKM. The artist enters multiplayer matches of Star Trek: Voyager \u2013 Elite Force under the identity of Allen Ginsberg and types the entire poem Howl into the game\u2019s chat in real time, while reciting it aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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