Ed Fornieles

Cel was an immersive role play performance that ran over 72 hours, simulating a set of hyper-aggressive patriarchal structures through means of 10 participants. Operating within a contained installation, the performance took the form of a radicalised alt-right gamer group that embarked on a program of self betterment, undertaking a radical act of self-destruction as their ultimate revenge against the world.

Appropriating ideological and symbolic structures of gamer and incel* culture Cel largely drew on the content of 4chan and reddit to create a complex social framework that foregrounded a particularly destructive brand of masculinity. In employing role play tools, it served as a vehicle to explore the conceptual architecture of these patriarchal structures through first-person immersion. Participants navigated a fictional simulation of the social ecosystems in dank online spaces, nourished by a medley of existential misogyny, supportive empathy, neoliberal affirmations and nihilistic fantasies.

The key objectives of this project were to explore the ideologies that shape men who inhabit aggressive hierarchical and patriarchal structures and to create a space in which these patterns of thought and behaviour might be dismantled and rethought. With these goals in mind, the performance was divided into two stages:

(1) Survival of the fittest

The first stage was defined by the protocol you must always have someone lower than yourself. In this precarious environment, rules, actions and scenes directed participants to assert themselves over others at all cost, forging hierarchical structures that were continually reinforced through interactions.

(2) Mass shooting and suicide

The second stage was defined by the act of a mass murder suicide. Two characters killed their peers and then themselves, at which point all participants transitioned into a state of abstract play in a non-defined environment. This symbolically marked the collapse of the group?s existing hierarchies, paving the way for alternative social structures to emerge.

Far from distancing himself from the value systems that underpin incel culture, Fornieles became a distinct part of them in an attempt to illuminate the logic behind such destructive processes. As a designer and player, he exploited his own internalised patriarchal values as well as those of his counterparts to understand the ideologies that contribute to such radicalised views. Rather than sympathising with these misogynist, alt-right, male groups, Cel proposes a mode of critical empathy to engage with them.

*Incels refer to members of online communities who identify as involuntary celibates, individuals who are incapable of finding sexual or romantic partners. In contemporary discourse, incel has become synonymous with misogynist, racist, transphobic and alt-right communities. Ironically, the term ‘involuntary celibate’ was coined by a queer-identifying woman in 1993 on a blog to discuss her sexual inactivity and later appropriated by predominantly male communities on 4chan and Reddit.culture.