Fran Ilich

Fran Ilich is a media artist and writer based in New York City. He is the author of the novels Metro-pop, Tekno Guerrilla, Circa 94 and the book-length essay “Otra Narrativa es Posible”. He was a fellow at Eyebeam and A Blade of Grass. He was Editor-at-Large for Sputnik Cultura Digital magazine in Mexico City, researcher at Centro Multimedia of the National Center of the Arts, and Screenwriter of the Interacción series at Discovery Channel Latin America. He was Visiting Lecturer at the Literature Department of the University of California San Diego and directed seminars on narrative media for the Universidad Internacional de Andalucía in Sevilla. He participated in Berlinale Talent Campus, Transmediale, ARCO, Documenta 12 and 13, and has shown at the Walker Art Center, Creative Time Living as Form, Open Engagement, Bronx Museum and the EZLN’s Festival Mundial de la Digna Rabia. The Vera List Center for Art and Politics and No Longer Empty have comissioned work.

Presenting

Sabotage Tlacatlaolli Variable

Sabotage Tlacatlaolli Variable is an online/offline alternate reality game where 'players' are directly intervening a loose narrative that creates a consensual space-time of events, histories, narrative, news, plots, postal letters, websites, servers, second life gatherings, focusing on upkeeping infrastructure of a support network. The ARG has its own floating currency known as the Digital Material Sunflower, it's included in the currency converter within Apple computers. Players can go for Sabotage (action/conspiracy), Tlacatlaolli (material and digital labor), Variable (investors). There are many institutions within (a zapatista coffee CSA, an aztec casino, a news website, corporations, etc). Physical rural land and an urban co-op apt in the Bronx have been purchased by its economy. There is a pop-up coffee-shop, serving as props and stages. There are nodes in several cities, and each of the nodes distributes cultural products, solidarity agricultural resources, etc from those involved. Players are assigned missions and given rewards.