How to Disappear, a short film by the collective Total Refusal, is an artistic intervention into a war game and an attempt to subvert it. Can a player in Battlefield refuse to fight, can they desert? To a certain extent. Leaving the battlefield is not an option. Neither is putting down weapons. She can only choose not to use them. Interestingly, the player can attack any object in the game, except the national flag, which can be shot at, but it can never be hit, destroyed or in any way affected. It just keeps on flattering. [shard: Methodological nationalism]
The Deleuzian notion of becoming-minoritarian comes to mind. The player has all the weapons afforded by the game at her disposal, i.e., she is a fully playable character, yet she refuses to follow the rules, she rejects the script, she plays the role of the unplayable, she becomes the ambient. She puts herself in the position of fragility, vulnerability, ultimately invoking death. Again, Deleuze’s idea of becoming-imperceptible, as blending in, becoming indistinguishable from the environment. The intent is not to exit the game, to go off grid or step out, but to do something other than the game prescribes in the game itself. Would it be possible to convince somebody else to join this futile exercise? To mirror the strategy? [shard: The Audible Mirror]
Will it be futile? Is futile that which doesn’t pay off? The autonomy of a player who refuses to play by the rules is extremely limited. But it can be extended. Higher autonomy [shard: Autonomous life] may be achieved only collectively, with rising number of disappeared that can guarantee one another means of temporary escape and respite. The player hides not in a place, but in a process, in a relation [shard: a process, not a place]. Nevertheless, she is located and locatable. One can hide within the system only for so long. It is risky. The logic of the game works to identify and eliminate irregularities. She is constantly under attack. Latched onto the game, feeding from it, but separate. Pursuing her own ends. Like a parasite, a predator that eats her prey in units of less than one. With no contingency plan. Able to achieve symbiosis, to destroy or repurpose her host, and/or herself.
A parasite is not welcome, she does not belong, she is unwanted [shard: Homelandless]. She creates discomfort, she disturbs, she castrates, destroying her hosts ability to reproduce. Parasite is not the Underground [shard: Underground]. She is neither excluding nor open. She is within and without. Chewing. She is competitively coexisting: she limits her own growth more than she limits the growth of another species. Parasite is the border. ⦚shard:border:mdnot found, not as a boundary but as gateway, a crossing.