
asses.masses // Co-Hosted by Risk/Reward
- Sat, Mar 29
Run Time: 450 min.
TICKETS $25
Doors 12:30 p.m.; Event 1 p.m.
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THE EXPERIENCE
Join PAM CUT for a one-night-only marathon video game, food, and live theater extravaganza like no other. During this epic 8-bit video game, audience members must work together to determine the fate of the revolution! Four intermissions with snacks will be provided during the experience, with additional food and beverage available for sale.
ON SCREEN: asses.masses
Created by Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim. Runtime: 7 hours 30 minutes.
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-made video game about labour, technophobia, and sharing the load of revolution, designed to be played from beginning to end in a live theatre. This is gaming as performance, an immersive, cheeky, and highly original work. Brave spectators take turns at the controller to lead the herd through a post-Industrial society, where asses are valued more for their hides than their potential.
Confronting automation-driven job loss, nostalgia as a barrier to progress, and the role of technology in adaptation, we are encouraged to find space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us.
asses.masses is Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy, as exciting in form as it is in content. No previous gaming (or donkey) experience required.
This presentation of asses.masses is co-presented by Risk/Reward. Risk/Reward has been providing space and resources for artists from the Pacific Northwest to develop and present their work for over 16 years. An early version of asses.masses was presented at Risk/Reward’s Festival of New Performance at Imago Theatre in 2019.
ON STAGE: Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim
Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim (Canada)
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.
Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is an artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. Often engaging with the politics of participation and interactivity, his recent works feature sustained investigations into the subjects of language, labour, democracy, and the art economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. His work has been featured in film festivals, galleries, and performance festivals across Canada, and recently in Argentina, Mexico, Germany, and the Arctic. He is the Producer for The Elbow Theatre in Vancouver and one half of Guilty by Association. Patrick has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Simon Fraser University. He is passionate about languages—speaking English, French, Spanish, and German.
Milton Lim (he/him) is a digital media artist, game designer, and performance creator based in Vancouver, Canada. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University. His work has been presented across Canada, and internationally in the US, Argentina, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, a founding member of Synectic Assembly—an Artificial Intelligence focused art collective, and an Artistic-Leader-in-Residence at the National Theatre School of Canada.