FOOD & FOOTAGE: Virtual Ritual

In the organizer's words:

At Food & Footage, filmmakers and chefs come together to combine moving images with a three-course meal and bring current social, cultural and political issues to the table.

Virtual Ritual - a digital, urban performance by Czech theater maker Jan Mocek - takes the audience into the immersive world of online multiplayer games and reflects on how virtual spaces reflect our real cities. In a mixture of theater, documentary film and digital aesthetics, the play examines social codes, urban structures and behaviors that shape digital societies. Afterwards, we will continue this exploration over a meal together - inspired by the performance and with questions about the rules we live by - both online and offline. After the performance, there will be a discussion with the artists and the audience.

Why bother with everyday problems, bad news and distant or near catastrophes - whether mine or yours - when you can live an unrestricted life, here and now, free from everything? Where can the American dream actually come true? In a city where after you die on the street, you just show up in another neighborhood? Who cares about the real world anymore? We don't want to play this game anymore!

Virtual Ritual is an original gaming performance, a digital-urbanistic trip through the virtual city of an online video game. It explores a digital society formed by millions of people worldwide who log into this huge gaming world every day. But here too, a game has rules - and virtual cities often resemble reality more than we think.

The urbanist Osamu Okamura, the YouTuber Atlet and the photographer and gamer Adéla Vosičková will be on the panel. The expertpanel will uncover hidden mechanisms, prototypes and rituals that shape the seemingly weightless world of MMOs:

• What norms, rules and codes prevail?
• How is the digital city designed to enable an urban experience?
• How do digital citizens really live?
• And what happens when we confuse virtual with real - or vice versa?

Virtual Ritual makes a bold promise to the audience: After this performance, you will see your city with different eyes.

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Virtual Ritual
Jan Mocek
75'00''
Czech Republic
2019
English language

The performance contains depictions of violence and offensive language in the context of a video game.

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The screening is free of charge; the purchase of dinner is not a prerequisite for attending the movie night. The price for the menu is 15 euros per person (drinks not included).

Admission: 19:00
Dinner: 19:30
Film starts: 20:30 (until approx. 22:30)