This is Not a Game

Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers becomes the final person to upload her consciousness into a video game. Reflecting on a pandemic year that also witnessed resistance movements across many parts of the world, the work highlights the eerie parallels between gaming and warfare strategies. These two realms have long shaped one another’s infrastructures, from diplomatic disputes once staged on the 64 squares of a chessboard to flight simulation technologies later adapted into the gaming experiences we know today. When the struggle is between the state and its people, she suggests that gaming strategies can equip civilians in resistance movements to challenge imperialism using its own operational logic. Yet once consciousness is uploaded, can we still return to the sensibilities and political drive that first sparked the revolution?