SI20/web/intro_aglaia/intro_aglaia.md

Introduction

The last trimester was an attempt to understand the notions of games and
rituals. Instead of introduction we will try to unravel this mysterious
journey as well as keep questioning and collaging.

We mapped the common characteristics and the differences between the
latter in relation to ideology and counter-hegemony. We practiced,
performed, annotated rituals that were connected (or not) with our
cultural backgrounds while we questioned the magic circle. We dived into
the worlds of text adventure games and clicking games while drinking
coffee and talked about class, base, superstructure, (counter)hegemony,
ideology, materialism. We discussed about how games and rituals can
function as reproductive technologies of the culture industries. We
annotated games- focusing on the role of ideology and social
reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of the world and created stories
with it (modding, fiction, narrative) while focusing on community,
interaction, relationships, grief and healing.

The eventual product of this process is a console, a magical object, a
wooden container, a promising healing. How the unpacking of notions of
games, rituals, ideology, superstructure in relation to the
witch-hunting can become the midwiferies of a healing box? How practices
of heal and care can work as counter-hegemonic acts that can cure and
liberate our souls and bodies from patriarchical and capitalistic
fetters?

We didn't manage to provide you with comprehensive and solid answers or
conclusive statements. The truth is that this wasn't our plan. Our
intention was to create openings for debate or even conflict, to map a
territory, to invite those who would like to join us.

> *"What if you are playing tetris and the tetris gods give you
> something apart from the usual seven tetrominoes, like an unexpected
> pregnancy or the end of capitalism?",(Steven)*

Starting with rituals we can claim that they can be understood as
instruments in the struggle for the exercise of power. Organized by
*repetition*, they (re)connect the individual to the collective,
creating a vision towards a given perception of society. Participation
in this creative act is determined by several factors, for example, a
ritual's function, its relationship to hegemonic power, a collective's
politics and objectives, etc.

> *"Ritual is a means of performing the way things ought to be in
> conscious tension to the way things are in such a way that this
> ritualized perfection is recollected in the ordinary, uncontrolled,
> course of things. Ritual relies for its power on the fact that it is
> concerned with quite ordinary activities, that what it describes and
> displays is, in principle, possible for every occurrence of these
> acts. But it relies, as well, for its power on the fact that, in
> actuality, such possibilities cannot be realized.(Smith,1980)* "
>
> *"Ideology talks of actions: I shall talk of actions inserted into
> practices. And I shall point out that these practices are governed by
> rituals in which these practices are inscribed, within the material
> existence of an ideological apparatus(\...)Ideas have disappeared as
> such to the precise extend that it has emerged that their existence is
> inscribed in the actions of practices governed by rituals defined in
> the last instance by an ideological apparatus",(Althusser,1970)*

Similarly, videogames create worlds. Often, those worlds mirror our own,
reproducing certain ideals and values as norms through their narrative,
game play, design. This trimester we explored world-building
characteristics found both in rituals and videogames. We critically
considered those worlds, identifying the key points and elements through
which specific videogames and rituals circulate political, cultural and
social values. While this world-building might be interpreted from an
angle of implicit and explicit bias rooted in hegemonic values, we
investigated the generative, creative possibilities of such
characteristics.

> *"The main task of mass culture is to create, reproduce, and manage
> particular kinds of subjects --- workers, consumers, individuals,
> citizens ---required for current conditions. To perpetuate their own
> existence, mass media must succeed at representing the violent
> coercion of capitalist systems as natural laws: Of course you have to
> pay rent to live inside; of course you have to buy food to eat; of
> course you have to work if you want to survive. The production of a
> fungible, disposable and migratory working class requires the
> alienation and atomization of communities into individuals, which
> involves destroying the village, kinship structures, indigeneity, and
> many other previous forms of meaning-producing structures, leaving a
> gap which ideology must fill. While the fundamental structures of
> domination --- racism, patriarchy, heterosexuality, etc. --- form the
> bedrock of this ideological apparatus, the complexity of the always
> expanding and changing capitalist system requires an equally flexible
> set of subsidiary tools capable of rapidly adjusting ideology en
> masse. In general, media emerge not to meet the demands or desires of
> individual users but to accommodate what the predominant mode of
> production requires.",(Osterweil,2018)*

Our intention was to look into rituals and their overlap with video
games as a way to explore \"forbidden\" or otherwise lost knowledge
erased by oppressive systems (e.g. witch hunts). Understanding games and
rituals as gateways to alternative ways of relating to Nature, each
other and (re)production of life, labour, etc, we played together by
writing fan fiction and spells, developing rituals, analysing and
creating games together.

> "S*ims as just social reproduction: some values are certainly given by
> the game (make money to buy nicer things, progress in your career by
> doing tasks that improve your skill, charisma is a skill but not
> kindness) , but also ideology is put into the game by the player. The
> player chooses what to reproduce and often share in the \"gallery\" or
> on social media. Community being so important in this game then means
> that the crux of the social reproduction is happening when the choices
> you have made in the game are broadcasted. Did you create a
> heteronormative white thin nuclear family that made a lot of money? or
> did you choose to play differently?",(Ada)*
>
> *"The Communist Party of Second Life (CPSL) aims to be a Marxist,
> internationalist and revolutionary organization for all communists in
> Second Life. The CPSL aims to spread understanding of Marxism among SL
> citizens, to organise support in SL for the class struggle in RL,
> including all struggles of the working class against imperialism and
> the bourgeoisie, its state and wars.",(Lydia)*
>
> *"The act of the modder's appropriation of the pre-existing game is
> also similar to Michel de Certeau's cultural 'poaching'.De Certeau's
> everyday bricolors make do with remixing the privatized spaces and
> products of consumer society that they find themselves inhabiting and
> using. Rather than being passive consumers, ordinary people invent
> varied subversive tactics for stealing back the given of everyday
> life. De Certeau writes, 'Everyday life invents itself by poaching in
> countless ways on the property of others'."(Schleiner,2017)*

Meanwhile, we went through the witch as a magical practicioner, as a
resisting body, a border figure. Federici presents the witch "as the
embodiment of a world of female subjects that capitalism had to destroy:
the heretic, the healer, the disobedient wife, the woman who dared to
live alone, the obeha woman who poisoned the master's food and inspired
the slaves to revolt. Behind the witch hunt, she uncovers a joint effort
by the Church and the state to establish mechanisms of gendered control
of bodies that immanently resisted newly instituted regimes of
productive and reproductive work"(Timofeeva,2019).*Meanwhile,
"sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge
of the fields or woods. They haunt the fringes. They are at the
borderline of the village, or between villages. But sorcerers not only
exist at the border: as anomalous beings, they are the border itself. In
other words, the borderline passes through their bodies.",(Deleuze, Guattari,1980)*

How the understanding of the witchs' hunting that happened a few
centuries ago in relation with the figure of the witch as marginal,
rebellion entity can shed light on the contemporary witch-hunting. How
this knowledge can provide us with tools of empowerment, emancipation,
resistance and make us reimagine counter-hegemonic practices of
collective care and healing?

Console is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help
yourself.

Console invites you to: open the box and discover ways of healing;

Console provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries.

Face the past and encounter your fortune.

Console gives you a new vantage point; a set of rituals and practices
that help you cope and care(of yourself and of the others)

Console asks everyday questions that give magical answers.

Console invites you to self reflect, explore your subconscious, spin the
wheel of fortune (and pick a card), explore what is possible beyond what
is obvious, guide you into\... \[the future and past\], creates stories
...