HARDLY WORKING

An ethnographic exploration of the work and life realities of non-player characters, the digital extras in video games. Their labour loops, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.

The stable boy stands still for a long time, isolates himself and does nothing: Total Refusal makes him a character who regains control over his time, who finds himself in a moment that does not belong to his work. The stable boy extracts himself from the organized and synchronized world of the game, he emancipates himself from a determined future where each of his gestures has a finality to become the model of a “total rejection” of being part of the pre-established society. The suspended moments are glimmers of hope, they draw a door of exit, a hope to derail the machine, the objective of the Marxist collective. Hardly Working ends with a powerful phrase “Can we start sliding?” that makes the film a call to derail the organized world and an anti-capitalist manifesto.

Paul Lhiabastres (Formatcourt.com, august 2022)