The unemployed donkeys have one demand: the humans must surrender their machines and give all donkeys their jobs back. But revolution is never easy!
asses.masses
Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim as part of Beta Festival
14 November 2026
This is an all-day event. Food and snacks will be served at appropriate intermission times and are included in the price of your ticket.
asses.masses is a custom-made video game about labour, technophobia and sharing the load of revolution, designed to be played from beginning to end in a live theatre. This is gaming as performance; an immersive, cheeky and highly original work. Brave spectators take turns at the controller to lead the herd through a post-Industrial society, where asses are valued more for their hides than their potential.
Confronting automation driven job loss, nostalgia as a barrier to progress, and the role of technology in adaptation, we are encouraged to find space between the work that defines us and the play that frees us.
asses.masses is Animal Farm meets Pokémon meets Final Fantasy: as exciting in form as it is in content. No previous gaming (or donkey) experience required.
Participation and active spectatorship is a central part of asses.masses. We invite you to be part of our Herd in any way you can.
About the artists, Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim
Image by Frank Sperling.
Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games.
In addition to their asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital), a role playing game about cultural design (FARCE), and an escape room intervention in a German museum (FUNFUG FORUM). Their projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Italy, Turkey, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the USA, in English, French, Italian, Catalan, Turkish, Portuguese, German, and Spanish.
Their next projects include, dam.nation, following the true story of twenty Canadian beavers acquired by the Argentinian government in 1946, and DRAGONS, a performance for young audiences about power, hierarchy, toxicity, and teenage dragons.
Image by Frank Sperling.
Patrick Blenkarn (he/him) is a Canadian artist working at the intersection of performance, game design, and visual art. He is a director, writer, programmer, animator, musician, and polyglot. Often engaging with the politics of participation and interactivity, his recent works feature sustained investigations into the subjects of language, labour, democracy, and the art economy, with projects ranging in form from video games and card games to stage plays and books. His work has been featured in film festivals, galleries, and performance festivals across Canada, and recently in Argentina, Mexico, Germany, and the Arctic. Patrick has a degree in philosophy, theatre, and film from the University of King’s College and an MFA in interdisciplinary art from Simon Fraser University.
Image by Frank Sperling.
Milton Lim (he/him, b. 1989) is an award-winning Canadian game designer, digital media artist, technologist, programmer, and performance creator based between Vancouver and Montréal. His research-based practice entwines publicly available data, interactive digital media, and gameful performance to create speculative visions and candid articulations of social capital. This line of inquiry aims to reconsider our repertoires of knowledge aggregation and political intervention in the contemporary context of big data and algorithmic culture. Milton holds a BFA (Hons.) in theatre performance and psychology from Simon Fraser University and is pursuing his PhD in the future of interactive storytelling at Concordia University. His work has been widely presented across Canada, the USA, Argentina, Germany, the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia. He is a co-artistic director of Hong Kong Exile, an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, a recent artistic-leader-in-residence at the National Theatre School of Canada, and a creative developer on the Innovation Team at Moment Factory.
Support credits
Created with support from Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, The Theatre Centre, VIVO Media Arts, Embassy of Canada to Argentina and Paraguay. Developed with the funding support from Creative BC, the British Columbia Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. Produced in association with the National Arts Centre of Canada’s National Creation Fund.
Beta Festival is co-founded by The Digital Hub and is a Project Arts Centre Associate Festival with ADAPT Research Centre as research partner.
Production credits
CO-DIRECTION, TEXT, PROGRAMMING, PIXEL ART, 2D ANIMATION Patrick Blenkarn (Canada)
CO-DIRECTION, TEXT, SOUND DESIGN, VIDEO, SHADERS, 3D VISUAL EFFECTS Milton Lim (Canada)
DRAMATURGY, TEXT, TOURING PRODUCER Laurel Green (Canada)
ORIGINAL MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN David Mesiha (Canada)
PIXEL ART, 2D ANIMATION Clarissa Picolo (Brazil)
PIXEL ART, 2D ANIMATION William Roth (France)
3D ENVIRONMENTS Ariadne Sage (Germany)
ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING Samuel Reinhart (USA)
INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION Stéphane Noël / Materialise (Hong Kong)
TOUR OPERATORS Patrick Blenkarn, Milton Lim, Laurel Green, David Mesiha, Marc Villanueva Mir, Stéphane Noël
Dates & Times
14 November
12pm
Tickets
€28/26
Space
Cube
Duration
7 h 30 approx. with 4 intermissions.
Please note: The length of the show is variable, depending on how long it takes the audience to finish the game.
asses.masses is not designed for audiences to come and go anytime, or to arrive late. We encourage you to get there on time or you will miss the introduction.
Intermissions take place every two episodes, approximately every 1.5 hours.
Catering Note
Food will be provided throughout the experience and served at each intermission. Food served will be vegetarian with vegan and gluten free options available.
Drinks will be available for purchase.
Content Advisory
asses.masses includes flashing lights, audience participation, violence, crude language, simulated donkey sex, simulated human sex, and references to drug use, suicide, and police brutality.
Recommended for mature audiences over the age of 14. This is not a performance that is suitable for young audiences.
Accessibility
Click here to read the Access Guide for this event.
All text in asses.masses is visually displayed on the screen. The show will be presented in English.
Genres
Festival
Image Gallery
https://vimeo.com/
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