Welcome to the celebration of fluid collectives, where you don’t have to be defined by your gender, your preferences or your background. Bring them on, we don’t want to hide or to ignore them either. Let’s confront each other's heritage and re learn how to care, looking for our common grounds. The Overkill “Collective Masquerade” invites artists, curators, game developers and creative minds to explore how we can redefine ourselves as individuals, species, society, and connected beings.

It is no news that we are social beings, but it is the first time we are confronted with physical distancing on a world scale, showing us how physical contact is an important aspect of our humanity. We need each other to dance in crowded raves as much as for contesting oppressive powers. The digital solutions will not replace the physical impact of the crowd, but we’ve seen more and more creative experiments to rethink the group online or offline.

The rules of online communication have been trying to integrate these needs. More and more webinars start with a moment of grounding, online code of conduct helps us reflect on safe spaces, kindness and accessibility, filters and virtual background support a reflection on privacy… As for the offline developments, from choreographed demonstrations to city scales, treasure hunts, the sense of presence, retaining the traces of passages have become a way to create a scattered crowd.

Collective masquerade – 2021

“The end of the world as you know it” 

the new and special online edition of The Overkill festival, is focusing on exploring hopeful futures.

The theme of the festival is directly related to the environmental, economical and identity crisis we are living in; our ongoing quest to “save” the world, the apocalyptic perception of the future, the movement of social collapse, an urgent need to reinvent ways of being together, a necessity to deal with our emotions toward nature and non human entities and so on. The pressure is physical now.

More and more communities and minorities feel unrepresented by the media, the governments and the culture they live in. When online platforms offer to regroup, to socialize and organise yourself, does it give these groups tools to express their ideas and opinions? We are wondering how these communities are/could transform these online social tools for their own reappropriation.

We see that collaborative platforms, open source projects can be a support for communities to experiment new ways of living together in a catastrophic environmental and economical context. When video games, often challenging you to save the world, are use as alternative space to resist oppressive governments, when films are re telling the stories we thought set in stones, to open our minds, when artists are engaged and push us to take action, we need to look into these scenarios to  re-imagine our future. We believe it is time to imagine a world in which humans are not the center of everything, but part of a circle of natural and artificial beings that try to live in a balanced environment.

We believe that playfulness, interactive and participatory art and fiction are necessary tools to explore these alternatives for our (present) future. Not only the content of this media can help us, but also the creative gameplay, the collaborative modes, immersive experience as triggers for the imagination, filters as tools for empathy, personification in films as attempts of different communication…

In these times when corona virus is spreading worldwide It is even more urgent to work on these alternatives in as many creative ways as possible. The momentum of solidarity, but also the need of togetherness and care for each other, we are living now in such a crisis must continue to become change. The fear and the unknown are something we live with, let’s surpass this to become builders of our world.

The end of the world as we know it – 2020

The Overkill HEAL ROYALE investigates the way in which technology and digital culture, while exposing people to a constant flow of input, also can provide spaces for online expression and beneficial practices. The festival has named three narratives, following gaming archetype to create a collective, transformative and sensorial experience.

, explores how technology and spirituality are connected. Within this narrative there will be attention for traditional care, meditative technology and liberating sessions in which the expression of pain, frustration and discrimination are also given a place in the healing process.

 we link the Witches archetype to the dream of digital commoning. Within online games and rituals, glitches and indigenous traditions, alternative and radical ways are sought to replace the prevailing capitalist and binary systems.

Within the third narrative Crowds of Sinners, The festival focuses on the possibilities of multi-sensory play, including a reflection on the problematic sides of digitization and inclusion.

The Overkill 2022, Heal Royale, 28 October to 4 November 2022

location : Sickhouse, Metropool, Tankstation + online stream on Youtube

Heal Royale – 2022

The Overkill festival is a playful art festival celebrating art house video games, interactive art and films as tools to engage in social challenges. The program of the festival regroups an exhibition, workshops, talks, experimental live performances and screenings. In 2023 The Overkill festival is also the stage of a LARP (live action role play) that each visitor can be part of.

The program brings local, national and international artists and creators together and is curated by Aike Lütkemöller and Marie Janin from Sickhouse with the support of guest curator Kostis Stafylakis, playful curator Zuraida Buter and artist researcher Erik Peters. The LARP, 

 is a co-creation of Kostis Stafylakis and Theo Triantafyllidis.

Rather than evading the (digital) wetlands, The Overkill wishes to design a route through its muddy paths. Artists navigating the Postdigital constellation think of the swamps as a playground to hybridise, as material under transformation and a womb for monstrous mutation. Today the swamp is reconsidered as a space for agency, it is inhabited by amphibious entities and exiled varieties of the self, the swamp is a liquefying space expanding on the different ecosystems.

The Overkill festival invites these hybrid and mixed media artists, accustomed to the porous and dripping networks of the everglades and welcomes everyone to venture into unstable fantasy spaces. Influenced by the proliferation of memes, wet aesthetics, derailed futures, “phygital”* morphologies and mixed fairy tales, these networks are to be navigated in daring ways, taking on a role and playing on the scenarios of an imminent reconfiguration of the planet.

* phygital : a combination of physical and digital

The Outburst of the Digital Swamp - 2023

In this new edition of The Overkill festival we invite you to discover the real real, where virtual spaces, online entities, and digital experiences are part of reality. You will need to step and dive in, believe what you feel, question your certainties and let the other disturb you.

Online and offline are so intertwined it is not relevant to oppose them anymore, the peculiar and exciting liminal space in between is growing fast. The increasing interest for ASMR, the development of multi sensory VR experiences, the need for new terms like “Mixed” or “Hybrid” reality are signs that the physical and the digital want to merge. The metaverse is under construction and we are its modders, responsible for its shape and its impact on the world.

The Overkill Modding realities is an ambitious program where we try to confront ourselves to our responsibilities as modders of the world, where we question the reflection our digital screens send back to us and where we dare bend the rules in order to open up.

Modding Realities - 2019

The Overkill is a playful art, games and film festival focused on the impact of digital culture on our society. The festival showcases a selection of interactive and participative art installations, indie/arthouse games, presents an alternative film program, experimental live performances and activities such as workshops, network meet-ups, talks, hybrid symposium…

Playfulness and gaming are at the heart of the program of the festival. We bring several disciplines together in an immersive experience to explore our theme from multiple, and diverse mediums. During the festival, these are exhibited together, without hierarchy, trying to confront the content and the mediums with each other in order to create debates. During the festival, visitors and makers are challenged to play, look around, participate, discuss, listen and exchange opinions, their experience is an important focus in our way of curating the event.

The Overkill Festival