One questionnaire, six artists: this group interview reflects the experimental and collaborative spirit of an exhibition curated by Babak Ahteshamipour, exploring improvisation and play as an alternative to accelerationism, burnout culture, and doom scrolling.
Interview by Kiriakos Spirou
Against the Will, Against Staying Still is a group exhibition curated by interdisciplinary artist Babak Ahteshamipour that adopts an experimental approach to exhibition-making. The curator has invited artists Erifili Doukeli (in collaboration with Jimo Kalogeris), Matthew D. Gantt, Berenike Gregoor, Nichole Shinn, Captain Stavros, and Pauvre Terre (Luca Reverdit and Pauline Sesniac) to engage in “rapid decision-making, communication, and upcycling” through a gamified curatorial framework. The exhibition runs for just three days (15–18 May 2025) at Esto Association in Athens.
Referencing the precarity and pressure of life in the dystopian present, Ahteshamipour attempts to interrupt the spiral of nihilistic thinking with a provocative question: if hacks, mods, and glitches are essential tactics for navigating collapsing systems, what if urgency were treated not as a trap but as an opportunity? What knowledge and skills have we developed under hyper-capitalism, authoritarianism, and surveillance — skills that might now serve us as tools? And if we were to resurrect our final brain cell in an ultimate act of survival, how could we use that knowledge to beat the game?
Ahteshamipour channels this atmosphere of urgency and risk through a curatorial strategy that borrows from the rules and tropes of role-playing fantasy games. Each artist is assigned a fictional weapon, complete with stats and characteristics, which they are expected to “use” in order to “defeat” the final boss — who, in a twist of narrative, is the curator himself. In practice, this meant the artists were invited to propose or create new work based on their interpretation of the exhibition’s themes and curatorial brief. In doing so, the villain-curator is already defeated: by deliberately delegating curatorial “power” to the artists, Ahteshamipour subverts the hierarchies of exhibition-making from the outset. But the question remains: what might emerge from such a set-up?
In keeping with the exhibition’s collaborative and non-hierarchical spirit, und. conducted a group interview with the participating artists. An unusual format in itself, the following conversation foregrounds the plurality of voices that shaped the exhibition, while also allowing each artist’s individual perspective to come through. For the sake of brevity and readability, the artists were invited to answer different parts of the questionnaire. The images accompanying this interview are “game cards” created by the curator, corresponding to the six weapons designed for the artists.
What is your weapon and how did you use it? What kind of limitations did that impose on your process?
Erifili Doukeli & Jimo Kalogeris: Our weapon is The Staff of Izkikazul, a support healing staff inspired by the Rod of Asclepius, reimagined through the lens of cosmic mythology. In the context of the exhibition, we use the staff not as an aggressive tool but as a symbol of repair, support, and resilience — a counter-force to domination or destruction. Practically, this meant designing a 3D-printed object that communicates healing and connection, rather than sharpness or violence. A key limitation was balancing the visual complexity of the forms with the structural constraints of 3D printing, ensuring that the final piece could physically support itself while still conveying an ethereal presence.
Matthew D. Gantt: I’m wielding The Sword of Fire — canonical and direct. Maximum stats, minimal subtlety. Perfect noisy companion for a conceptual hack and slash.
Berenike Gregoor: My weapon is The Axe of Cataclysm — powerful, but it burns out fast. Right now, it’s recharging. The artwork isn’t missing; it’s simply waiting for the moment it can be unleashed at full strength.
Nichole Shinn: The Twilight Wand is a cursed relic from an ancient past. The wand is held in a deep catacomb in the earth since it is closely related to the moment between life and death. Its special power is to raise the dead to command at will, but only after draining enough life support from an enemy. It takes life to bring life.
Captain Stavros: My weapon is The Hammer of Spikes, a weapon that can alter reality and create hallucinations, created by the trickster demigod Kelorat. A form that structures something that is not yet here. A structure for the future, the future itself. It's a tool, a plan. Like a calendar that shows us how to structure our future. It's an algorithm, a method. It helps us to imagine something that is not yet here. It's a hallucination, but also a motivation. A motivation to fight.
Pauvre Terre: Our weapon is a forbidden spellbook overflowing with knowledge. We use this weapon to revisit the notion of knowledge as “data” within a grimoire-machine from the Anthropocene. This diabolical machine turns out to be rigged, since it is necessarily an object of inhuman knowledge from the current capitalist system. Thus, our spellbook is transformed into a Pachinko, an ersatz of casino where you can't win. The limitation we encountered is the use of the notion of fabulation, and the gap between the book and the machine. Both are objects of narrative and play. Though to what extent does this grimoire allow itself to be distracted by the new object it tends to become, in order to satisfy the consumer society of knowledge?
In a world that keeps generating and regenerating all sorts of waste and excess, how do you keep making new work? Is there an ethical way of making art?
Berenike Gregoor: I don’t like making for the sake of making — especially in a world already overflowing with output, noise, and excess. I think the ethical way to make art is to wait until there’s something necessary to say or do. That’s why my weapon isn’t physically present yet, it’s still charging. To me, making less but meaning more is the most honest response to the times we’re in.
Captain Stavros: Everything is relative. The 1% of the 1% of the human species wastes as much as the other 80%. I cannot compete with the waste of the 0.01%. I’m not wasting. We (the 80%) follow different rules. We should not feel guilt. Ethics should not be about the materiality of a work of art, but about the content of it. At times like this, I think, what would Shrek say? He might answer: “Ogres are like onions... they have layers.”
In your opinion, how does digital worldbuilding and fiction enable radical ways of talking about (and coping with) current struggles?
Erifili Doukeli & Jimo Kalogeris: Digital world-building and fiction allow us to create symbolic spaces in which current struggles can be redefined or even temporarily escaped — in order not to avoid them, but to work them out in entirely new ways. In the work we are currently doing for this exhibition, the Staff of Izkikazul becomes an imagined therapeutic artifact that reflects on actual necessities: rebirth, sustainment, and healing in the presence of exhaustion, conflict, or breakdown. Borrowing from myth (like Asclepius' Rod) and blending it with quantum elements, we utilize a dialogue where personal, social, and even environmental struggles can be explored from perspectives that transcend logic — through symbols and imaginative play. This kind of digital craft allows internal or collective wounds to be externalized and suggests radical tools for healing that may not (yet) exist in the material world.
Nichole Shinn: Using fiction as a metaphor and analogy to our own lived traumas and experiences is one of the most powerful techniques for coping through the tremendous loss and pain that our lived reality brings. Being able to envision new futures and being able to navigate the whys and hows of history through reflection is a powerful tool that isn’t just a coping mechanism but also something to inspire hope in a hopeless world. This show is a really amazing concept that, through a playful approach, we are able to express catharsis in our own way and hopefully inspire others to share that with us. I’m really happy with the framing of the weapon I’ve been given and I feel it speaks to a moment in my own personal life that is struggling with loss of life, so in its own way it’s cathartic to make something necromantic.
Immediacy comes with spontaneity, which in turn comes with a kind of unfiltered imagination. Do you follow your “creative reflexes” when you make new work?
Matthew D. Gantt: I often think of that notion of art being more like bottom-up gardening rather than top-down architecture. When I work, I find myself less the conduit of one ‘big idea’, and rather the synthesizer of many disparate threads. There’s this great quote by the composer Morton Feldman where he says “I don’t push the materials around” that really resonates for me. In this case, I’ve long been interested in self-generating systems, virtual sound sculptures, emergent behaviour in game spaces, and of course dungeon lore. Being given the sword and thrust into battle for this show becomes a space to let these interests talk to each other, revealing their contours according to their own nature, rather than them needing much direction from myself beyond a bit of encouragement. I’m the gardener, not the architect, the conductor, not the soloist.
Pauvre Terre: As much as possible, nevertheless sometimes reflection takes over spontaneity. We have to tell ourselves a story first to be creative. We choose the graphic components and protagonists naturally according to our immediate desires, then we experiment with various story paths based on these fixed elements, following the most relevant one to which we're most sensitive.
How are you planning to defeat the final boss?
Erifili Doukeli & Jimo Kalogeris: We don’t intend to defeat the final boss by force — we aim to overcome it. Our approach is one of healing, support, and regeneration: repairing what is broken, restoring what is depleted, and strengthening ourselves and others over time. The idea is that the boss's strength may be brute force or control, but ours is found in resilience and connection. We undermine the dominance of the final boss not by direct confrontation, but by refusing to collapse — keeping the system (or the self) alive and adaptive no matter what.
Matthew D. Gantt: I’m going full dungeon crawl. Before battling the final boss, the level must be cleared of its henchmen. Swung wildly by a self-playing FPS controller, the sword is tireless. Given enough time in battle, victory is certain.
Berenike Gregoor: I’m not charging in. The Axe of Cataclysm needs to be timed — one strike, full intent. I’m waiting for the right moment, not wasting energy. The final boss won’t fall to noise, but to precision. That’s how I plan to win.
Nichole Shinn: I’m playing the long game. The wand is not best suited for short massive attacks, but it really embodies a poisonous slow build up. There’s nothing more poetic than a final boss dying at the hands of their own blood and soul.
Captain Stavros: The final boss wants to be in control. So the key is to make them feel like they are not. I plan to miss all deadlines. Postpone planned arrangements and expose them to the possibility of their ambitions collapsing. In my calendar, I'm planning a series of procrastination exercises, step by step. Will there be a “weapon”/artwork at the “battle”? What will the boss do when the questions come up? Will they face the humiliation of their power? Do they still want to be the boss?
Pauvre Terre: Enthralled by the allure of Pachinko, the final boss can easily be consumed by the game and lose all sense of reality. We take advantage of his feeble mind to seduce him into a never-ending chasm. What he doesn't realize is that the more he plays, the more the grimoire's magic affects him, sucking the boss into an alternate reality that causes him to lose a lot of health and allows our allies to attack while he remains stunned.
