MUTANTS OF READINESS is a new chapter in the Readiness SAGA, a serialized simulation of social conflict in the US. Kostis Stafylakis and Theo Triantafyllidis, alongside a shifting synthesis of collaborators, tailor real and fictional, often scary and fringe, collective identities to a clandestine world permeated by fantasy aesthetics and hopepunk trash. Readiness foreplays the pending scenarios of an upcoming American Civil War. It playfully enacts the conflict between groups such as the “Preppers” (the cult of doomsday enthusiasts who marshal for the “end of the world as we know it”), the “Boogaloo Bois” (Civil War accelerationists, flexing tactical gear and Hawaiian shirts), and the “Golden Horde” (the alleged criminal horde of the unprepared citizens featured in preppers’ jargon and literature). The Readiness SAGA was initiated by Kostis Stafylakis, Theo Triantafyllidis, and Alexis Fidetzis in the framework of ENTER by Onassis Foundation (2020).

In MUTANTS OF READINESS, two preppers, PIGGO and GUSTAVE, have found shelter in an egg-shaped homestead, stored at a deserted corporate building. The bootleg microchips on their foreheads happen to be gateways for an Artificial Intelligence that has overpowered them and enrolled their mutation. They’re taken over by PASCALE, an unbound singularity that announces random ascertainments. PIGGO looks like a human pig on steroids, and GUSTAVE resembles a seductive feline. Guided by PASCALE, the mutants equip the Egg, employ security policies, and train to recognize their foes. They receive a transmission by a JAUSH (impersonated by American artist and author Joshua Citarella) who trains them in warfare and evaluates their level of security and preparedness.