ARIA: OPEN CALL / WORLDS’ END HACKATHON

What is ARIA?

ARIA is a summer school designed as a role-playing game that takes place through the lens of a fiction-theory narrative to explore ways of imagining new possibilities for what our world can be in a time of changing planetary ecology.

The second edition of ARIA is dedicated to spectrality and the ends of worlds, exploring rituals for mourning, and ways of interfacing with the specters of the (deep) past and future that haunt our ecologically fragile planet. It brings together artists, critical thinkers, and experts from diverse fields for an intensive that starts with two days of public events (lectures and discussions) and continues with five days of a closed-door RGP (Real Game Play) experience with workshops by invited mentors.

How is it structured?

The summer school consists of two connected parts: Public programme (lectures, screenings and discussions), and a closed-door role-playing game that includes daily workshops by visiting mentors engaging with somatic techniques, supersensory awareness, performative ethnography and narrative co-creation with synthetic intelligence. 

Who are the lecturers and mentors?

Áron Birtalan, Alice Bucknell, Carina Erdmann, Ida Hiršenfelder, Lucia Pietroiusti, Lukáš Likavčan, Omsk Social Club, Špela Petrič, Emma Waltraud Howes + more TBA

Where & when is ARIA? 

• Public events: 17 & 18 August, Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana 
• Role-playing game: 19–23 August, Krušče Creative Centre 

What’s the theme?

The second edition of ARIA is dedicated to spectrality and the ends of worlds, exploring rituals for mourning, and ways of interfacing with the specters of the (deep) past and future that haunt our ecologically fragile planet. 

More about the story and overview of Worlds’ End Hackathon RGP: The Story So Far…Worlds’ End Hackathon

What to expect?

Selected participants will attend the public programme, followed by a five-day immersive role-playing experience – Worlds’ End Hackathon – designed and facilitated by Omsk Social Club.

Worlds’ End Hackathon is a real game play (RGP), an experimental role-played work that takes place through the lens of a collectively fictioned process-based Live narrative. The narrative is centred around the idea of a group of strangers meeting without prior knowledge of each other and attempting to perform a succession of ritual worldings. The group attempts to form a series of hyper-worlding sigils that effectively provides multi-stable images of new interdependent flourishing ruins beyond this reality stack. Making palpable and demonstrable the need for the end of the world as we know it whilst simultaneously hacking an alternative ecology for the living. 

The work will have no public audience, practising 24/7 immersion with added inputs from visiting practitioners, for our friends from the future are already with us. The work will be live for 72 hours, sandwiched between one day of preparation and one day of debriefing. 

Before the start of the summer school an online preparatory session with Omsk Social Club will be organised for the selected participants. You will also receive a handbook with the introduction to the mechanics of ARIA, rules of engagement, the initial story as well as the outlines of the characters to develop and inhabit.  

What is the fee?

The course fee is 200 EUR per participant. It covers: 

• shared accommodation throughout the programme, 
• one dinner with the mentors and the ARIA team during the public programme,
• and three vegetarian meals per day during the role-play prepared by an in-house cook. Necessary dietary restrictions will be accommodated.

Accommodation: Ljubljana – The organiser will provide shared accommodation for the days of the public program, but the participants are free to arrange their own if they so please. Krušče – The shared accommodation will be arranged during the role-play. It will be necessary to stay on site in the organized quarters.

Travel: Participants are responsible for organising their own travel to and from Ljubljana at the start and end of the programme. However, the transport between the two locations (Ljubljana-Krušče) during the programme will be arranged by the organiser. 

The selected applicants are expected to be present for the full duration of the intensive (17st – 23th August) and participate in the role-playing format designed by Omsk Social Club.