Screening of various fragments of the Virtual Mods Syndicate project with Guim Camps. The project, which Guim Camps started in 2020, has been having various activations and deliveries, including Un Trabajo de verdad, an amateur play with Colombian gamers, carried out on a GTA V roleplay server; virtual talks by Arsgames, Remedios Zafra and Jamie Woodcock; and Guaracha Budots, a rave inside a Minecraft server. The session will combine projections and comments to unfold and get to know the project. 

Virtual mod syndicate

Some gamers are dedicated to creating through leisure channels that offer new platforms such as video games. They design and programme Mods (3D modifications) of cars and landscapes that transform videogames, based on their own contexts, to re-appropriate virtual environments, adding buses, characters, clothing, protests and demonstrations, city streets, etc. Isolated and hyper-connected, gamers cooperate by sharing each modification and rescue a visuality without history condemned to remain only in virtual space, questioning the individualism that the network imposes on the consumer.

The Virtual Mods Union (SVM) traces modes of cooperativism and social struggle in the current era of cognitive capitalism. It is a virtual association that seeks to collect and archive the symbolic and visual production of the gamer universe of mods, in particular that related to the working class, identity politics and class struggle; and to address the crisis of trade unionism and cooperativism from the place of leisure and virtuality.

In "A real job" the Virtual Mods Union teamed up with a group of Colombian gamers who founded an online server for the game Grand Theft Auto called Montañeros RP. With this group of gamers they performed the play "A real job" within the roleplay server itself with their avatars and modifications. Roleplay is a game modality in which gamers develop the life of a live character, playing with other people connected online. The theatrical show explores the virtual world as a means of creation and protest, and through fiction traces some of the themes of job insecurity and associationism in the digital age.

In "Guaracha Budots" a virtual rave was organised in SAVVY with the Manila Matrioshka Club on a Minecraft server, combining Filipino Budots and Colombian Guaracha music, and the visual imaginaries of both tropical countries, brought in the case of Colombia by Guna Dule weavers and the Tejedoras de Mampuján. The Sindicato rightly criticises the confusing relationship between work and entertainment, but has also grown up pointing out the difference between the global south and the global north in the imaginaries projected through video games.

Links of interest:

www.festivalpanoptic.com

https://guimcamps.com/

By Guim Camps

Guim Camps (Barcelona, 1986) is an artist, educator and curator. He has worked as exhibition coordinator and junior curator at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, where he curated El camino más largo (2021) and Rodrigo Hernández. El Espejo (2021), among others; he previously worked as a teaching artist at the Red de Artes Visuales de la Alcaldía de Medellín (2013-2015). He is currently working on the project Sindicato Virtual de Mods, a platform for reflection on representation and labour and affective relations within video games. He has presented his work in institutions such as Tallinn Art Hall (2023); SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin (2022-2023); Museo La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia; Etopía Centro de Arte y Tecnología, Zaragoza (2021); and La Capella, Barcelona (2020-2021). He is currently exhibition coordinator at MACBA.

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