Penny Rafferty: Politics as Play, The Active Viewer

Play is the new protest, from role-playing ancient right wing tropes to casting meme magik egregores - Penny Rafferty looks at why the Left needs to look as the right’s past times, and start crafting for the future war.

Bio

Penny Rafferty is a writer and visual theorist based in Berlin. She is heavily involved with the artist collective group Omsk Social Club and pioneered the spectacle Ying Colosseum (2014-2015). She is working intensively with the concept of Cosmic Depression—the theory of depression caused by digital utopia (Paradise without Ecology).

She writes regularly for Kaleidoscope Magazine, Elephant Journal, Flash Art, Art in America, AQNB, Sleek and KubaParis. Her theoretical essays and creative texts have been commissioned for Status Effect curated by Andrew Varano, Websafe2k16, Oncurating.org - “Alienation and Estrangement Issue” edited by Dorothee Richter. She was also recently included in the book Polar Reflex for the exhibition “The Internet is Present” edited by Reese Riley and she will publish her up and coming book "Deep Intimacy" next year, based on a larp exploring IRL to URL acts of domination and submission that last over five months 24/7 with one other player.