asses.masses

Overview

An epic day of video gaming and uprising: asses.masses invites you to play out the heroic journey of a herd of donkeys trying to get their jobs back.

The unemployed donkeys have one demand: the humans must surrender their machines and give all donkeys their jobs back. But revolution is never easy! asses.masses is a custom video game designed to be played collectively from beginning to end by a live audience. It’s a 7.5 hour epic story of a herd of unemployed donkeys trying to get their jobs back, all while navigating the perils of a post-Industrial society in which they’ve been made redundant. 

Cheeky, political, and best described as Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy, asses.masses puts the control(ler) in its audience’s hands and asks them to discover the space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us.

No previous gaming (or donkey) experience required.  Approx. run time 7.5 hours. Tickets include meals, snacks, and soft drinks during intermissions.

Intermissions take place every two episodes, approximately every 1.5 hours.

SUPPORT
Created with support from Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, The Theatre Centre, VIVO Media Arts, Embassy of Canada to Argentina and Paraguay.
Developed with the funding support from Creative BC, the British Columbia Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.
Produced in association with the National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund.

Executive Producers
Chris Deephouse and Donna Hunt
Co-Producers
Shelley Green and Michael Golden

About the Artist

Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games.

In addition to their asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital), a role playing game about cultural design (FARCE), and an escape room intervention in a German museum (FUNFUG FORUM). Their projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, the United Kingdom and the USA, in English, French, Italian, Catalan, German, and Spanish.

Their next project, dam.nation, follows the true story of twenty Canadian beavers acquired by the Argentinian government in 1946.

Credits