do as us users do

August 28, 2025
at kex–kunsthalle exnergasse, 1090 Wien
curated by adO/Aptive

𝗱𝗼 𝗮𝘀 𝘂𝘀 𝘂𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗼 was a discursive and performative evening in three parts. The program reflected on gamification and different modes of immersion into game-realms - be they IRL or fully virtual.

Participating artists/collectives:

WORK HARD! PLAY HARD! working group
Jelena Visković
adO/Aptive

The WORK HARD! PLAY HARD! working group (Dzina Zhuk, Aleksei Borisionok, Olia Sosnovskaya, Nicolay Spesivtsev) hosted an assembly titled Decentric Circles of Leisure Unrest, a dynamic, decentralized gathering that blended conversation with spontaneous creative acts to explore themes of joy, struggle, and refusal. The assembly delved into anti-capitalist notions of non-work, burnout, collective care, and resistance through shared tools, practices, and protocols.

Motonation is a video work by Croatian-born, London-based artist Jelena Visković. It is a sci-fi biker film set in near-future Belgrade following the story of Čedo, a member of a counterculture movement called Happy Nation, as he embarks on an adventure beyond the commune’s boundaries with the help of a hacked city-motorcycle. The journey explores Čedo’s relationship with movement, his motivation to tap into a world of desire and expression that extends beyond the social and spatial boundaries of Happy Nation. The film explores movement, body-politics and performance in former Yugoslavia and in the region today. The characters face comedic alienation both when it comes to performativity of past narratives, and in relation to neoliberal ideas around freedom and community.

AdO/Aptive showed their performance WHEN IN RO/AM that premiered in May at Torula Kunsthalle in Györ. The performance stages a sports match in two halves divided by a half-time show that features a surprise act. The six players wear jerseys with RFDI chips that can be read by a scanner on the central sculptural element, the "Sacrificial Input Box". The piece is a performative response to the post-informative nature of the extractive practices of platform capitalism and highlights the fragility of our online identities as well as the commercialization of personal information.

WHEN IN RO/AM was created by:
adO/Aptive: Daniel H. Pineda and Janina Weißengruber (concept, set-design, sound and production)
Martin Gius (IT) (game mechanics, hardware for the Sacrificial Input Box, general technical setup)
Tamara Zs. Vadas (HU) (dramaturgy and the movements)
Iris Fabre (FR) (interactive and transformable costume)