Cowboy Postcapitalism Stages a Live Zombie-Apocalypse Run
Total Refusal, the Vienna collective that turns mainstream games into political theater, performs at Games Transformed in London.
- When
- Sat., Oct. 31, 2026, 3 p.m.
- Where
- Games Transformed festival, Bethnal Green, London
- Cost
- Festival day passes from £20, weekend passes from £45, plus booking fee
Cowboy Postcapitalism is a live in-game performance by Total Refusal, billed as a panic run through the zombie apocalypse, at the Games Transformed festival in Bethnal Green on Saturday afternoon. The collective and the festival announced it together in a joint Instagram reel.
From the trailer for Total Refusal's How to Disappear (2020), shot inside Battlefield V, not footage of the London performance. The clip plays silent here; the full trailer has sound.
Total Refusal is a Vienna-based group that calls itself a pseudo-Marxist media guerrilla. It works inside big commercial games, not alongside them, to expose the politics under their glossy surfaces. In its live performances the members play a game on a big screen and talk over it, so a firefight or an open range becomes the set for a lecture. Neither the collective nor the festival has named the game this time.
The London date lands two days after Total Refusal's Berlin run of Let's Play I Am Old and Tired with Theater im Bahnhof, a theater evening set in Red Dead Redemption 2. The collective's films include How to Disappear (2020), an anti-war film made inside Battlefield V, and Kinderfilm (2023), shot in Grand Theft Auto V.
Games Transformed runs Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 across three Bethnal Green venues under the theme Here to Stay, Here to Play. Its program includes Mansoor Adayfi on Guantánamo and the IWGB Game Workers union.
Total Refusal is the kind of group the games press rarely covers. Killscreen's free Radar newsletter follows them and the rest of the work at the edges, three times a week.
