The Game of Freedom

2018 – with Veronica Diesen

The Original Pitch (2018)

The Game of Freedom is an imaginary multiplayer video game exploring the far-right use of ‘freedom’ to mainstream reactionary ideas. A collectively constructed fictitious combat where players compete for a currency called freecoin.

Media used to ‘shoot’ the film include Zoom, Teams, and other platforms.

Tagline: There’s no I in Teams /

Oil Spill was our initial working title. ‘Spill’ in Norwegian means competition, play or game. In English it can signify overflow or disclosure. It is also a homophone of the yiddish ‘spiel’, which in English can refer to an elaborate but superficial story, a salesman’s pitch.

Different commentators, experts, and analysts are given the brief of devising the architecture of a new kind of video game. Each in different ways are players in the current ‘game of freedom’ that uses Norway as an ideologically important locus or platform: at once a double and the opposite of its north sea rival and wannabe sovereign (wealth fund), the UK.*

Titles (to wealth):

In the game players compete to accumulate a game currency called freecoin. The winners can exploit stories about free expression, human rights, and Norwegian (or UK) exceptionalism to amass titles to wealth in the real world, converting freecoin back into commodities, such as oil.

Out of the materiality of oil and its institutions, Oil Spill will explore the representation of abstraction in different forms and at different scales: from the Norwegian Oil Museum in Stavanger, to Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, and the Equinor Art Collection – the privatised successor to Statoil, with its offshore art programme on oil platforms curiously mirroring the Fund’s offshore investments, and the Nobel Peace Centre – an idyll of the rights of man not immune to the men of the right, and ‘men’s rights’.

In the process we hope to question the dominant spiel about Norwegian and global capitalism, their relation to fascism, and offer propositions for resisting these more effectively.

PREVIEW:

Capturing visual and sonic images from the EDL marches in central London in 2018 to the NGO networking of global ‘human rights’ activists in Oslo, Oil Spill/ The Game of Freedom will superimpose figments from the current right wing ‘game of freedom’ – using demands for free speech to legitimize reactionary ideas – onto a continuum of carbon-based images.

The film will use HD colour video and 16mm film to produce a primarily monochrome (like a black square on a white ground), fictitious (as in imaginary) documentary derived or refined from real (and so unrepresentable) facts.

We will use the specific material properties of oil as a ‘use-value’ that is currently functioning to destroy all of us, to (re)imagine a form of representation adequate to the paroxyistic contradictions of the current (global) situation.

‘Left’, right and centre – all the powers of ‘purpose led capitalism’ – have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise the spectre of riot. All converge in supposing that human or material excess is the real issue, the source (and resource) of our woes – elites, globalists, bankers; flows of money or of displaced (and ‘overly populous’) populations.

We do not propose to replace the black mirror of oil with something more sustainable (for capitalism) but rather to hold it up to the world that produced and is produced by it – to turn these ideas upside down.

Preview of an uncompleted project – text for Vimeo page (revised May 2026):

The Game of Freedom looks at free speech in the context of growing right-wing populism. It considers relations between art, oil, and environment in a context where scarce funding for culture is tied to political-economic agendas, left, right and centre (right).

The project involves the construction of a virtual video game interrogating freedom through its specific function in the Norwegian context. Norway is an important locus and ideal in the international far right game of freedom: stage, platform or model. In our video, activists and analysts and are given the brief of devising the architecture of the game.

Players compete to accumulate a game currency called freecoin. The winners exploit stories about free expression, human rights, the Norwegian alternative, etc, to accumulate titles to wealth in the real world, converting freecoin back into commodities, such as art or oil.

Out of the materiality of oil and its institutions, the Game of Freedom
materialises its basis in forms of 'extractive' capitalism while maintaining a monochrome opacity, a windowless view of the world.The film's images are collected from sites of economic, financial, and visual abstraction:

the Norwegian Oil Museum in Stavanger, Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, the Equinor Art Collection (the former state oil company) with its old masters in oil and its offshore art programme on oil platforms – black mirror of the Fund’s investments. The Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo:
an 'idyll of the rights of man' not immune to the men of the right and
indeed men's rights.

We began with sounds and images from the EDL fascist marches in London in 2018, and recordings of global 'human rights activists' networking in Oslo.The final film is derived from these 'real life' figments of the right wing game of freedom, where free speech is deployed to legitimize reactionary ideas.

[...]

The above outline was written a few years before people started applying tomato soup to oil paintings to raise awareness about climate change. Before the George Floyd uprising and the ‘Black Out Tuesday’ day of black squares on instagram. Before the blank post it notes and White Square protests in Hong Kong and mainland China. (All these could be seen as part of a tendency in global proletarian struggles to confront power not with aset of legible demands but a constellation of ‘memes with force’. Protests that either make no demands or overflow them, redefining the lines between right and left in the global fight against fascism around property and violence).

Visually, we wanted to use the physical properties of oil in combination with the history of artistic – including cinematic – abstraction, from Malevich’s white and black squares to Franz Klein’s black reflections to Adorno’s notion of art as windowless monad. Digital video (mobile phone) footage and animation combined with a specific sonic architecture for each ‘game level’ to produce a primarily monochrome and fictitious documentary, nonetheless derived or refined from real facts. Sound, voices, verbal images over a blank – black or white – screen. Like sections of my earlier film Dead the Ends, the project self-consciously reiterates Debord’s Howls in Favour of Sade, this time as a documentary of the near future.

If centre and right increasingly converge in supposing that human or material excess is the real issue, the source (and resource) of our woes – elites, globalists, bankers; flows of money or displaced populations – we use the black mirror of oil to turn these ideas upside down.

[...]

Then the pandemic came along and emptied the white rectangles in the cinemas of their images. On their exterior walls the lightboxes became blank white squares deprived of forthcoming attractions. The project was put on hold and the game concept mutated to a form of platform reflexive feedback using Zoom and Teams.

It was before Israel’s perpetration of a genocide in Gaza. We had hoped to reflect on and push back against the artwashing of apartheid as an important part of the game of freedom, the elephant in every white cube. With events in Gaza the telos of white supremacy was made too clear to be unseen. At the same time the live streamed smart phone genocide made visible the powerlessness of the image as never before. It was also before Epstein, when everything you’d always wanted to know about cinema became something you no longer wanted to be told about – least of all by Woody Allen. It was before Trump’s tariff war, lost to China. Before the invasion of Venezuela and assault(s) on Iran, whereupon the USA began to discover certain absolute limits to the game of freedom. When the game becomes war, all bets are off, and the reign of the dollar itself – ‘the root form of representation in society’ (TJ Clark) comes into question.

We did not anticipate the pandemic, nor the genocide, nor the wars to come. In crucial ways the project now seems obsolete, an antique. At the same time, the game of freedom is still on. Who is winning now?

OLD NOTES (2023)

Pitch (black): The Game of Freedom / Oil Spill

‘Spill’ in Norwegian = competition, play, game.
English = overflow, reveal. The yiddish ‘spiel’- cool story bro. superficial, elaborate sales pitch. spiel = pitch = black = white]

Players get a brief - devise the architecture of the game. You are players in the current ‘game of freedom’.

Norway is the game surface. Double and opposite of its north sea rival, the wannabe sovereign (wealth fund), UK.

Players compete to accumulate a game currency called freecoin.

Winners tell stories about free expression, human rights, Norwegian (or UK) exceptionalism.

Get skills powers titles to £ – convert freecoin back into shit, ie commodities, eg gas, oil

Oil spill took note of the trend for artists to do art against oil with funds from eg major oil states aka Norway.

Abstraction comes in different forms and scales: from the Norwegian Oil Museum in Stavanger, to Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, and the Equinor Art Collection or the Economics institute. Fascism comes as standard in a completely auto-destructive capitalism.

Privatised successor to Statoil, Equinor’s offshore art program on oil platforms tracks the Fund’s offshore investments.

The Nobel Peace Centre is an idyll of the rights of man. From the freedom of speech for Anders Breivik to ... punch a fascist, we are still caught in the game of freedom, but the new forms or levels of the game involve the crisis of platforms themselves - such as Twitter - the emergence of (yet more)(alternative) alternatives. Whether Parler or mastodon, we will continue to play our game about the game, our gaming of the game, with an eye to the contradictions ‘on both sides’, but with a relentless compulsion to find a way for the comminist camel to pass through the eye of a socially-contracting, fascistically expanding endtimes capitalism.

From fascist marches in London whitehall in 2018 to NGO networking of ‘human rights’ activists in Oslo, this is figments of the right wing ‘game of freedom’. demands for free speech used to float and promote reactionary ideas. a continuum of carbon-based images for national rebirth thru global death

fascism was always a death drive. meet the tories. meet der starmer.

HD colour video ---> monochrome (like Malevich’s black square on a white ground --- perhaps only extreme abstraction ultra high pitch white noise, 12 tone dissonance, a politics informel, can begin to un-represent the hellworld we are in, to be the windowless monad you want to see instead of this world

fictitious(ie imaginary) documentary derived or refined from real (((unrepresentable)))) facts. the judaeo-christian and muslim ban on images of the deity and the marxian prohibition on images of the future are still crucial weapons if you are against the world but need to survive it ‘longer than power’ (as Brecht sd).

just stop oil, but don’t forget to destroy it as a ‘use-value’, too; i.e. oil is only the ‘screen image’ of the real antagonist of humanity - and that is a social relation or network bigger and more horrific than all the social media platforms put together.

how to show this?

throw oil at politician?
is riot an emulsion of the people?
are émeutes the speech of the silent or a screech more piercing than language, since they set the price of everything to zero (pace Joshua Clover)?

black on white may be the suprematism that breaks the white supremacism of the freedom game. with the George Floyd Uprising, this dialectic evolves yet further: neither black nor white and definitely not ‘all lives matter’ but rather:

black white brown. turn it upside down

‘Left’, right and centre – all the powers of ‘purpose led capitalism’ – have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise the spectre of transracial anti-capitalist revolt. make ‘revolut’ revolution again/ for the first time.

gamify the gamification (passification) of the riot
game the gamers
level down
raze up

CAMERA
OBSCURA
GERMAN IDEOLOGY

All converge
supposing
that human or
material excess
is the real issue,
the source (and resource) of our woes – elites, globalists, bankers; flows of money or of displaced (and ‘overly populous’) populations.

We do not
propose to
replace the
black mirror of oil with something
more sustainable for capitalism but
rather to hold it up
to the world that produced and is produced by it –

to turn these ideas upside down

This project remains unfinished. My collaborator, Veronica Diesen, passed away in September 2025.