Console

Special Issue XX

Console is an oracle; an emotional first aid kit that helps you help yourself. Console invites you to open the box and discover ways of healing. Console provides shelter for your dreams, memories and worries. Face the past and encounter your fortune. Console gives you a new vantage point; a set of rituals and practices that help you cope and care. Console asks everyday questions that give magical answers.

Special Issue XX was co-published by xpub and Page Not Found, Den Haag. With guest editors Lídia Pereira ♈︎ and Artemis Gryllaki ♐ we unraveled games and rituals, mapping the common characteristics and the differences between games and rituals in relation to ideology and counter-hegemony. We practiced, performed and annotated rituals, connected (or not) with our cultural backgrounds while we questioned the magic circle. We dived into the worlds of text adventure games and clicking games while drinking coffee. We talked about class, base, superstructure, (counter)hegemony, ideology and materialism. We discussed how games and rituals can function as reproductive technologies of the culture industries. We annotated games, focusing on the role of ideology and social reproduction. We reinterpreted bits of the world and created stories from it (modding, fiction, narrative) focusing on community, interaction, relationships, grief and healing.

Laser engraved quote from Silvia Federici, Love is the great magician, the demon that unites earth and sky and makes humans so round, so whole in their being, that once united they cannot be defeated.
Laser engraved quote from Silvia Federici, Love is the great magician, the demon that unites earth and sky and makes humans so round, so whole in their being, that once united they cannot be defeated.
Screenprinted cover of the Console box.
Screenprinted cover of the Console box.
Screenprinted book cover of the Console Booklet, from The Upside Down Oracolotto card.
Screenprinted book cover of the Console Booklet, from The Upside Down Oracolotto card.
Nighttime Ritual: Guided meditation from cardboardlamb
Nighttime Ritual: Guided meditation from cardboardlamb
Imagined tarot cards based on YouTube comments
Imagined tarot cards based on YouTube comments
Holographic Oracle Deck
Holographic Oracle Deck
Modified tetris fantasies
Modified tetris fantasies
Worry Dolls
Worry Dolls
Reading with the Oracolotto cards.
Reading with the Oracolotto cards.
Console box with Fiction Friction, Oracolotto, the Wheel of Fortune, a Worry Doll, tea and a tealight.
Console box with Fiction Friction, Oracolotto, the Wheel of Fortune, a Worry Doll, tea and a tealight.
Fiction Friction gameplay during the launch at Page Not Found.
Fiction Friction gameplay during the launch at Page Not Found.
SIXX Licence reading ceremony at Page Not Found. The copyleft licence for this object included (in additional permission 4b) a term specifying the ritual absorption of intellectual property.
SIXX Licence reading ceremony at Page Not Found. The copyleft licence for this object included (in additional permission 4b) a term specifying the ritual absorption of intellectual property.