Larps and larp-adjacent works use participation as material, opening up fascinating possibilities for co-creation and ensemble play. Simultaneously, they question traditional ideas of authorship; how is being a creator of a larp different from other fields? If participants are co-creators, what is the nature of “audience”? And is all this talk about participatory works just posturing, if it is the designer-artist who walks away with the fame? This is but one of the many awkward aspects of larp. The actual practice of playing a world into being jointly sounds great, but why does it often feel so darn cringe?

Again, we want to bring together people who are working in the areas of larp and art, incorporating elements of pretend play, durational experience, narrative co-creation, inter-immersion, character fidelity, and game mechanics in their works.

We invite you to participate in the third SUBLIME PRETENSE symposium, organised in Gothenburg before the four-day larp convention Knutpunkt kicks off. SP began as a way for people who work across the art and larp worlds to find out what is happening in the field and share knowledge, but it is open for anyone to attend (with pre-registration). The tone skews more academic and professional, but you absolutely don't need to be in the art world professionally to follow and contribute, and we welcome a broad range of practices and levels of experience.

If you would like to present past work or current practice that relates to art and larp, please send a short 200-word pitch to sublimepretense@gmail.com by February 28th. We will feature 10-minute presentations, followed by a discussion.

The event is free of charge and also open to people not coming to Knutpunkt. It runs from 10:00 - 14:00 on April 16th, 2026. Vegan lunch will be catered by Skogen, for which there will be a small fee (100 SEK).

Sign up below to register to attend the symposium. Space is limited, so please do sign up early. See you in Göteborg!

the Sublime Pretense team

Sublime Pretense is organized by Corinne Mazzoli, Kaisa Kangas, Sophie Allerding, Lorenzo “Lin” Angeli, Jana Romanova, Jamie MacDonald & Jaakko Stenros, in collaboration with the Knutpunkt 2026 Nordic Larp Conference, and its pre-conference event A Week in Gothenburg.

Skogen: https://www.skogen.pm/

Knutpunkt: https://knutpunkt.se/