CTRL ALT REVOLT: Daybreak and the Antipolitics of Cooperative Play

The documenta Institut hosts a workshop on cooperation and conflict in serious games that traces the political in a hackathon dedicated to the board game Daybreak.

Over the last decades, games have established themselves as a serious form of artistic expression. At the same time, they have increasingly been embraced as pedagogical tools for imagining more progressive futures by replacing competitive with cooperative game mechanics. In such games, dissent and conflict among players tend to be externalized onto the environment of the game system itself. While on the surface cooperative games appear political by enforcing particular normative orders, on a deeper level they are inherently antipolitical because they not only suppress the agonal principle but also presuppose a unified general interest.

By confronting game designer Matteo Menapace with this provocative thesis, the workshop aims to re-politicize his outstanding board game Daybreak, the 2024 winner of the prestigious Kennerspiel award. Embedded within a role-play framework developed by artists Carina Erdmann and Steph Holl-Trieu, we will engage with the apparent dichotomy of egoism and altruism by attempting to hack the game world of Daybreak through rule play: both as a revolt against the climate crisis itself and as a revolt against the fallacy that ecological salvation lies in technical implementation rather than in political will formation. 

The workshop is held in English and is part of the seminar “(Anti)Political Games“ at the University of Kassel. Students can earn credits.

Date:
Saturday, January 24, 2026, 10 am–8 pm
Sunday, January 25, 2026, 10 am–5 pm
Venue: University of Kassel, ZUB, Gottschalkstr. 28a, ground floor.

As space is limited, registration is required: gruenberg@documenta-institut.de