Club Stahlbad
Total Refusal (2023)
Club Stahlbad is a multi-channel video installation that interrogates the ideological infrastructures of digital entertainment spaces. Set within a virtual nightclub populated by non-playable characters (NPCs), the work follows their endlessly looping, glitch-ridden dance routines to expose the scripted and constrained nature of digital leisure. Referencing Theodor W. Adorno’s claim that “fun is a steel bath”, the piece highlights how entertainment often mirrors the structures of labor it promises to relieve. The NPCs’ awkward, repetitive gestures transform pleasure into discipline — automated, aestheticized, and strangely hollow.
By staging this uncanny choreography, Club Stahlbad reveals how ideology operates not through slogans or overt propaganda, but through patterns of behavior, recursive loops of interaction, and the programmed rhythms of play.