The work Χenomilitia: The Antifa Chronicles is a response to Donald Trump’s 2020 tweet which read, “The United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization”. The installation/video game created by ¥€$Si Perse, and Shell Ocean directly responds and looks critically at the rising right-wing populace and the demonising of the Antifa movement. Speculating on the implications and consequences of targeting and labelling larger and heterogeneous political movements as terrorist organisations, the work asks these questions through the gaming narrative: “What if you’re chased and fight back in self-defence – does that make you a terrorist? When does the prey end up becoming the hunter? And If they treat us like terrorists, will we by proxy become them?”

By using sci-fi strategies, the work creates a terrorist role-playing game. A fictional battle royal starring the xeno-queer militia. The viewer/player can adopt the role of this new Antifa-Queer-Terrorist Alien that has been birthed from the threat of the right-wing. The character consists of a mutant body formed by multiplicities, a chimaera of diversifying biomass. The objective of the game is to survive in coexistence; to do so, the player must face the enemy – fascism and totalitarianism – in a nod to the true final bosses of our era, that we do stand a chance of defeating.

in collaboration with Shell Lucky Ocean (Tech Artist)
XENOMILITIA: THE ANTIFA CHRONICLES, 2021
Video game installation
Monitors, controller, bean bag, vinyl print, riot police helmet, speculative LGTBQI+ flags and war banners
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artists
Commissioned and produced by the Athens Biennale