Once again, Re:humanism joins the programme of the Fondazione Romaeuropa, within ULTRA REF at Mattatoio Roma, with a day dedicated to videogames as spaces for artistic experimentation, critical thinking and social inquiry.
On Sunday, September 27, Ultra Club: Game Day brings together artists, collectives, researchers and independent practitioners to look at videogames from different perspectives: as simulations of reality, spaces of labour and social interaction, environments shaped by algorithms, and tools for imagining other ways of inhabiting the present.
The day begins with a Parcours & Showcase bringing together projects and practices by YONDER, Fantastico Studio, Morbidware, Angela D’Onghia and Simona Vacca, AIV – Accademia Italiana Videogiochi, Daniele Giardini and RUFA Games. Rather than treating games simply as entertainment, the showcase opens up a broader field in which play, simulation and digital worlds become ways of observing how contemporary life is changing.
This perspective continues through the Modding Workshop by 2girls1comp, dedicated to videogame modification as an artistic and critical practice. By intervening in existing games, modding can become a way of questioning the rules, narratives and systems embedded within digital environments. (Free admission, but booking is required here)
The afternoon also features a conversation, organised in collaboration with RomeFuture Week, bringing together Matteo Lupetti, Federica Di Pietrantonio and Daniela Cotimbo to discuss the relationship between art, videogames and society, and the ways in which gaming cultures intersect with broader transformations in our everyday lives.
As the day moves into the evening, Ayoung Kim’s Delivery Dancer’s Sphere takes us into a dystopian simulation shaped by algorithmic labour, surveillance, temporal loops and multiple identities. Here, the videogame becomes a space in which contemporary forms of work and control can be experienced from within.
At 18:30, Total Refusal presents Red Redemption, a live performance set inside Red Dead Redemption 2. Through NPCs, landscapes and digital environments, the work examines class relations and the economic mechanisms of capitalism. The programme continues with World at Stake, a film created entirely within sports videogames, reflecting on competition, political agency and the tension between action and observation.
Across these different practices, Ultra Club: Game Day asks what videogames can reveal when we stop looking at them only as games: what kinds of worlds do they reproduce? What forms of work and social relations do they simulate? And what possibilities emerge when artists intervene in their systems, rules and environments?
A full day dedicated to videogames as cultural spaces through which to observe, question and reimagine the present.
📍 Mattatoio Roma
📅 September 27, 2026
Full programme: https://romaeuropa.net/festival-2026/ultra-club-game-day/