The Great Success Machine

Live Action Role Playing Game
In Collaboration with Till Wittwer
2017-ongoing
The Great Success Machine is a LARP that adopts the format of a career-center workshop at an international art school turned group therapy. Embarking on a journey through an artist career a group of art students learn to collectivize their practices to protect their not yet established careers and survive the discriminatory algorithms of Adobe’s Great Success Machine. A look at the neoliberal turn in art education filled with smaller and occasionally larger disappointments, compromises, and changes of circumstance.

The role playing game thereby reflects on the question of what an art education can and should provide. What types of artists and creative minds does a neoliberal paradigm of teaching art and design produce? How can artists develop a relevant and sustainable practice under these circumstances? Our performative elements are taken from Forum Theater, Psychodrama, table top RPGs, and systemic constellation therapy, as well as writing and drawing exercises.

The Great Success Machine was performed at: University of Arts Berlin(UdK), University of Arts Hamburg (HfbK), UCLA Game Lab, Cooper Union, NYU Game Center, Burg Giebichtenstein Halle

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@ UCLA Game Lab, February 2018

@ Cooper Union, April 2019

@ NYU Game Center, April 2019