Mission Must Be Done

使命必达


city-wide alternate reality game,
logistics & surveillance, collective resistance



 (Hangzhou, China 2022)

Mission Must Be Done, courier training center, Hangzhou, 2022.

Mission Must Be Done is an alternate reality game in which strangers become couriers for a fictional high tech logistics company and carry its system through the streets of Hangzhou. 

New recruits reported to a courier training center on Singles' Day, registered in a web app, and collected round silver parcels from dispatch machines. The parcel could never leave the courier's body, touch the ground, or be opened.

Players carried parcels between more than ten art spaces, confirmed deliveries by code, accumulated scores on a leaderboard, and received random missions along the way. Assignment, tracking, scoring, and control moved out of the platform and onto the body.

The game took place during China's 2022 pandemic restrictions. By the end, couriers began pushing against the system directing them and gathered secretly in an underground dance hall.

A delivery system begins as a set of instructions. Then people have to decide how long they are willing to obey it.

Mission Must Be Done, round parcels awaiting dispatch, Hangzhou, 2022.
Mission Must Be Done, courier training with the delivery web app, Hangzhou, 2022.
Mission Must Be Done, a courier registers in the web app, Hangzhou, 2022.
Mission Must Be Done, couriers receive a parcel, Hangzhou, 2022.
Mission Must Be Done, opening of the courier training center, Hangzhou, November 11, 2022.
Mission Must Be Done, delivery route map of participating art spaces, Hangzhou, 2022.

A project of _ao_ao_ing ensemble & Xie Yi.


Iterations

City Run 2022, China Academy of Art, Hangzhou

Collaborators

Tongchang Tproject (organizer and codeveloper); Xie Yi (game designer)

Support

Coordination: Chen Tianqi.