New Wave
Before we’ve even reached the festival floor, A Maze’s curious charms have begun to take hold of us. The ticketing lobby of the Berlin venue – usually a site of impatient attendees, frantic organisers and stoic-looking security men – is slowly filling up with shredded paper, and will continue to do so over the course of the week. It’s all thanks to The Book Ritual, Alistair Aitcheson’s self-described BYOS (bring your own shredder, obviously) which immediately asks us to pour our heart out into a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Jude The Obscure with a felt-tip pen. “Have you ever lost a thing that was special to you?” the game asks us. “I want to know.” Within seconds, we’re scribbling down our deepest thoughts, safe in the knowledge they’ll be shredded moments later. It’s a refreshingly cathartic start to the festival, a coded message instructing us to leave our baggage at the door in expectation of a cornucopia of mind-bending videogames.
Our initial experience chimes with ’s proclamation, during his opening speech, that A Maze is a place of positive chaos. “It’s not about products,” the festival’s founder and director booms from in front of the DJ decks, “but the art of play.” It’s hard not to be swept away by both Wiedemann’s message and his delivery. On stage, he exudes a skittery, almost manic presence, skipping back and forth between prepared material and off-the-cuff jokes, his persona mirrored neatly by his appearance. Wiedemann is a part-time model: tall, rough and ready, with blonde stubble. But he’s also gangly, seemingly off-balance at times, with a beaming grin that breaks out every minute or so. He continues with his wide-ranging inaugural speech, the biggest cheer from the crowd reserved for his description of the attendees as the “punks” of videogames. The message is held together by his earnest, total commitment
