AWOL – Absent Without Leave

Total Refusal – Digital Disarmament Movement is an art collective founded in Graz in 2018, consisting mainly of Leonhard Müllner, Robin Klengel and Michael Stumpf.
 

The aesthetics and structures of video games—their relation to the real physical world—are quoted and manipulated by them in a subversive way. They translate the codes of games into real life—motions, behaviours, aesthetics.

In this world, the levels of reality have long been mixed. Avatars and real people coexist more or less well with each other according to certain rules of the game. These rules, however, are constantly and fundamentally disturbed by Total Refusal. The potential of this collective lies in the anarchic joke. It creates an amazingly impressive visuality that emerges from the visual noise of today’s digital flood of images. The artists pick up the existing mechanics of the games and misuse them: Imagine it’s a war and all the tanks are just going around in circles ...