Patrick Blenkarn Hosts Democracy, Games, and Performance
The asses.masses co-creator leads a free Zoom dialogue on games, performance and collective decision-making for Koç University's KARMA Lab.
- When
- Tue., Oct. 27, 2026
- Where
- Online, on Zoom
- Cost
- Free
Patrick Blenkarn, co-creator of the theater video game asses.masses, leads Democracy, Games, and Performance, a free online dialogue and workshop, on Tuesday, October 27. Koç University's KARMA Lab hosts the session with the Sevgi Gönül Cultural Center in Istanbul. The session asks whether arts practices support or hinder a strong democracy, and tests how games and performance can host collective decision-making. The announcement is on Instagram, and the Zoom link goes up in KARMA Lab's Instagram bio on the day.
The 2023 teaser for asses.masses, by Milton Lim. Watch it with sound on Vimeo.
asses.masses, made with Milton Lim, is a video game played by a theater audience over roughly seven hours, with volunteers taking turns on a single controller. It follows a herd of unemployed donkeys trying to win back jobs taken by machines. The project describes itself as "Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy."
The game is on tour. It plays Lisbon this weekend, Brasília over Halloween, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago on November 8 and Dublin's Beta Festival the following week; the full itinerary is on the project's site. Killscreen covered the Ghent date last week. Blenkarn's wider practice deals with language, labor and democracy across video games, card games, stage plays and books.
asses.masses at Inteatro (photo: Giulia Di Vitantonio) and the Theatre Centre; the herd on the run. Images: Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim.
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