Miko Hucko, born 1988 in Bern, Switzerland, is a reality programmer. formerly, they were known as: dramaturg, performer, writer, activist, game designer, socionaut, discourse pepper, social hacker. what is reality programming?
they currently have some kind of housing in Hamburg, Germany and work wherever it pleases and is needed.
Miko’s interests are manyfold, yet they all circle around human interaction. the rules of what is and how it could be. the conventions and borders of everyday life. the HOW of living that so often stays invisible to the naked eye. the things that happen between us and grow into having their own lives.
one of Miko’s core beliefs is that if you just do anything with conviction and long enough, it will become normal. thus they invent new words, languages, rituals, artistic formats, histories. thus they are interested in the idea of europe, the spirit of hacking, the correlation of work and money, eating habits, the concept of time, gender trouble, commons and community. more often than not, Miko works in collaboration with people from various disciplines.
this is a list of friends and collaborators.
here is a kind of CV for hard facts.
Because this biography is an artistic one, it will follow the convention and list (many but not all the) things that Miko has done so far in a chronological order. further down there are fewer things listed. mainly because they seem irrelevant now, not because fewer things happened. but time is weird, as they say.
(note from 2019: somewhere along the line, my gender has changed from female to non-binary. I will not erase formerly used pronouns as back then, they were true.)
2018
Writing. Speaking. Community Organising. were the things that kept me going mainly in this year. I’ve been co-creating different zines, thinking about rhizomatic societal structures, housing vs. traveling, shared economics; giving workshops (FLINT focused) on How To Speak Up – How To Use Your Voice – How To Hold A Speech, co-organising events and discussions. Also I learned some things: playing the guitar, using an electric drill, chopping wood, that I can draw, after all, and that my gender is a really weird blob.
Für d’ Revolution isches wichtig, dass me schön cha singe with Trade Sachs @ Tojo Theater, Bern. A revolutionary sing-along revue.
Utopian Witness @ Buskers Festival, Bern. Coming from a post-capitalist future, I’ll guide through a city in late capitalism and show you it’s historical absurdities.
La revolution n’aura pas lieu @Kugelfest, Signau. I’ve done some history – rewriting interviews about the revolutions that have already happened. Read exapmles here (in german).
2017
part of 1komona @34C3. more information from here on out. If we are Komona, we can make it work.
We Are Here. with Spieleberatung and many others. an community and discourse-building event with gamelike structures, We Are Here revolves around utopias, the european dystopia and everyday struggles. it’s a cc-by-sa blueprint you can download here.
cooking for comrades / rewriting Allmend History. as part of the project Magic Almond (Bern), I installed two collaborative events on one weekend in August, the first one on sharing dreams and food – from present to future so to speak – the second one on inventing a new history of this place, a history that fits with our present and future. see images and history fragments here (in german).
In spring and summer and autumn 2017 I spent a lot of time doing activist work. of course this goes hand in hand with my rather artistic stuff that is also activist but I find it weird to list those things on my homepage. I co-created a huge urban game, wrote speeches and history. I dreamed. I resisted. I screamed. I distributed and created zines. I worked with transformative justice and community accountability. I believe more than ever that the revolution is between us all.
Wie arbeiten wir künstlerisch im Kolletiv? with magic garden. After two intense weeks of work and discussion, we as a collective started working on a small toolbox of methods to facilitate artistic collective work. it’s cc-by-sa and you can download it here. (german)
2016
There is no game. with Spieleberatung and many others. A four-day community action with open world characteristics and digital interfaces built in to CCH, planned exclusively for the 33C3. 900 participants and a still growing / unfolding community. there is no need to travel alone. if we are komona, we can make it work. read more
it’s bigger on the inside. solo. audioinstallation about functional housing and the idea of living in time instead of space. invited by Urbanize 2016, Galerie an der Speckstrasse, Hamburg
das Narrenschiff. with Kathia von Roth and many others. open-world theatre about rules for a utopia. in cooperation with play16 – creative gaming festival hamburg. read more (german)
ARTist-Notline. solo. tear-off stubs in public space, telephone hotline with questionnaire. read more (interview in german)
Questioning. with magic garden. a face-to-face performance with questionnaires. no performers, just audience. originally from 2014, here rewritten and translated into russian for the Gogol Center, Moscow
Trade Sachs Trust Evening. with Tobak Lithium. a propagandistic theaternight about money, trust, and possible new ways of coexistence. Tojo Theater Bern, Ballhaus Ost Berlin
Spieleberatung / the game parlour. a space for collaborative game creation and playing, visiting Hallo Festspiele Hamburg, Weltkongress der Hedonistischen Internationalen, Boui-Boui Festival Switzerland, 32C3
2015
Labar. with R.F. a speakeasy cocktail bar where a flow-chart decides what you order and you pay per hour instead of per drink. Galerie Duflon-Racz, Bern
Radical Friendship. solo, part of Cooking for Comrades. live cooking and debate concerning friendship, competition, jealousy, capital. Lehrerzimmer im PROGR, Bern. read more
Finding Neurope. with Social Space Agency. a socionautic multi-level game, leading you through your city, your favourite past-time and towards a new version of reality. invited by Transeuropa Festival Belgrad
Oh sweet Tradition. solo, part of Cooking for Comrades. live cooking and debate concerning tradition, artistic conservatism and possible ways out. actually, they invited me but then would not let me cook, only debate. which made my point exactly: state museums are no breeding places for new ideas. Kunstmuseum Luzern
The State of The Art. solo, part of Cooking for Comrades. live cooking and debate concerning art, network structures, possible politics. Marks Blond Documentary Labs, Milieu Galerie Bern
Trade Sachs Trust Services. with Tobak Lithium. small games, workshops and rituals surrounding the concepts of trust and money. invited by SKILT Festival Bern, Festival für Freunde DE
Souvenir. with magic garden. lecture performance about the mechanics of memory. in coproduction with Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Roxy Birsfelden, Theaterdiscounter Berlin. read more
In summer 2015, I became part of two activist projects: the queer-feminist radioshow lila_blue(s), for which I wrote various articles, and the autonomous school denk:mal where I’ve been giving free german classes.
2014
metatext – towards a new culture of reading. with Social Space Agency. collaborative exploration on the conventions of reading, creating new techniques and ways of reading. we ended up writing a book, download it for free here. invited by Frankfurter Buchmesse
Niemandsplatz. with Social Space Agency. in collaboration with the department of city planning, we opened up the Schützenmatte as a space for utopian discussion. read some stuff about it here (in german).
Questioning. with magic garden. a face-to-face performance with questionnaires. no performers, just audience. ok, and a voice. invited by Schlachthaus Theater Bern, Theater Roxy Birsfelden, 100° Festival Berlin. see trailer
The Bern Mission. forming the Social Space Agency. working on basic techniques and systematics in collaboration with Bernese inhabitants and visitors. in coproduction with AUAWIRLEBEN Theaterfestival Bern
2013
Ruine Europa. with Tobak Lithium. a cleansing lecture performance releaving us from the old europe and, as they go hand in hand, theater. promoted by PREMIO Nachwuchspreis, in coproduction with Tojo Theater Bern. read more
In 2013, I spent a lot of time writing on a sci-fi novel that I never published. just in case you’re wondering why it’s so empty here. additionally, I spent 6 weeks in the Netherlands on an artist exchange visiting the faboulous ZINA in Utrecht and working on their project Wijksafari. I also started working for our local newspaper’s cultural blog, KulturStattBern.
2012
die Performance findet nicht statt. with Tobak Lithium. audio-installation invited by Transform_2, Güterstrasse 8, Bern
RAST. opening spaces in various unused houses in the city of Bern, rast was a nomadic bar and self-organized city development concept. I left due to political differences in spring 2014.
This year, I finished my Masters Thesis, a sociological study about fringe theater and its makers in Switzerland. what is their educational background? how much do they earn (yes, there are gender-based wage gaps)? what is the specific history of fringe theater? what could its future look like? write me if you want to read it. it’s written in german and contains many colorful graphs. after handing in, I went on a journey by train through eastern europe, all the way down to Istanbul.
Be-52. with Tobak Lithium. a series of minutes of silence, held in the public space of Bern, every time concerning a different topic within the universe of capitalist society. see video
Eine kleine Wunschmaschine. with Instantes Drama. a play (my text) about identity crisis in a consumerist society, based on the work of Deleuze/Guattari. Tojo Theater Bern
Fünf Mal Schwarze Katze. with Instantes Drama. a play (I directed, text: Thibault Schiemann) about the absurdity and the search for “das richtige Leben im falschen”, fortunetellers and dreams. Ono Bern, LYZ Siegen (DE), Haus Mitte Basel
2011
Die Erzählungen der Alpedrosi. with Tobak Lithium. mockumentary participative performance where we performed an invented tradition and handed it in for the UNESCO world heritage. Schlachthaus Theater Bern, some living rooms. read more
Neukunstlernen. with Flufenbach&Zufenhaim. interactive theater performance about fascist structures from Israel, reconzeptualized for the european context. Schlachthaus Theater Bern
die geballte Faust. with Instantes Drama. we had gotten the permission to use a whole floor in an unused office building and had decided to do a lot of Faust. namely, one of us did a new translation of the master and margarita, the second one dramatized it, the third one staged it with 20 people. one play was not enough, so I wrote a second one, Faustoder, where Mephisto traded bodies with Faust.
2010
Die Städtischen Dionysien. with das automat. we were young and wild and ambitious, so we, a handful of artists (most of us barely twenty years old), decided to organize a four day festival with theater, concerts, exhibition, performance at Kulturhof Schloss Köniz. read more here (article in german)
For this occasion, we (Thibault Schiemann, Moritz Achermann, me) had written and staged an opera complete with orchestra and choir: der gelöste Prometheus. ein politisches Singspiel. to us it was important to a) bring politics back into opera and b) write new music andnew texts for a new society.
tldr? Miko Hucko is and has always been exploring methods to manipulate norms, impact reality, open up debates on what is and what could be. she has started her journey in theater and is currently making her paths through the jungle between arts, sociology, hacking and games.
reality and resistance 