The computer game was exhibited for the first time in the bunker of Regelbau 411 from March to May 2022.

Heavy Load presents a world centered around daily chores. In the game, the player gathers water from a lake and pour it into a tub on top of a hill. Based on the action of collecting water, the heroic tales typically forming the narratives in the gaming world are displaced.

The game is based on a quote from the short story “Nawa” by Kōbō Abe on which the video game director Hideo Kojima has based his game Death Stranding. The quote reads: “The “rope,” along with the “stick,” are two of mankind’s oldest tools. The stick to keep the bad away, the rope used to bring the good toward us. They were our first friends, of our own invention. Wherever there were people, there were the rope and the stick. (...) Unlike the stick, the rope had potential to tie things close to you together.”

The game draws on the idea of the rope as something you use to draw things to yourself. In the game you are a person who picks up water. You take the water from a lake and pour it into a tub on top of one of the hills that surround the lake.

The work is made in collaboration with Nina Møller (sound), Oscar Louw (programming), Bastian Leonhardt Strube (game design) and Mikkel Battefeld (game design).