Opening: Tue, 06.06.2023, 7 pm
Duration: 07.06.– 29.07.2023
Artists: OMSK Social Club
Curatorial support: Frederike Sperling
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”[1], goes a famous bon mot by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Language, he maintained, stakes out the terrain of our relation to the world. These limits, however, are not rigid. On the contrary: For the philosopher, speech is a playful-performative act. By communicating – having a discussion, exchanging ideas with friends, holding a meeting, etc. – we jointly explore the possibilities of a particular communication space. We play a “language-game.” We renegotiate the limits of language, and thus, potentially, those of our world.
At the core of OMSK Social Club’s artistic practice is the question of how language-games shape our consciousness. With T(( ))mb (spoken: tomb) the collective presents its latest work specially produced for Kunstraum Niederoesterreich: an immersive real-game-play scenario at the intersection of exhibition, performance, and film.
The collective’s installations and performances follow the patterns of so-called LARPs (live action role plays), hybrids of improvisational theater and pen-and-paper role-playing games, their works systematically blur the boundaries between fiction and reality, play and dead seriousness. The group entitles its practice RGP, “Real Game Play.”
With T(( ))mb, OMSK invites the Kunstraum audience to explore what lies beyond the “limits of our language and world,” to the domain of a critically speculative as-if. The setting is loosely based on the aesthetics of video games. T(( ))mb consists of three stations where visitors can familiarize themselves with the rules and characters of the game set-up and culminates in a film produced especially for the Kunstraum – the centerpiece of the installation. It is up to the visitors whether to follow the invitation as formulated by OMSK or not. For T(( ))mb can be played in different ways: practically in knowing interaction with others, or secretly in thought, after leaving the Kunstraum on the way back to the everyday world.
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[1] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1922), ebook.
OMSK Social Club is a Berlin-based collective founded in 2016. Their immersive practice focuses on the creation of shared experiences and speculative fictions. In their works, they devise alternative modes of perception and encounter, from traditional observation to more pervasive durational experiences, which they call “real game plays.” These living installations weave virtual egos, pop cultural and political phenomena into dematerialized hybrids of contemporary culture and the participants’ personal interpretations.
In order to help you find your way through the world of T(( ))mb, we have compiled a variety of clues in a cheat sheet. Find HERE the T(( ))mb-Cheats.