GAMESCENES

EVENT: PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 (NOVEMBER 15 2024 - APRIL 27 2025, SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA)

PROJECT HASHTAG 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Wish Office & Playing Art Method: PROJECT HASHTAG 2024
November 15, 2024–April 27, 2025

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
99 Sejong-daero
Jung District
Seoul
South Korea

press release

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA; director Kim Sunghee) is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition for PROJECT HASHTAG 2024, an open call initiative aimed at discovering promising creators and supporting interdisciplinary collaboration in the visual arts. The exhibition will take place from November 15, 2024 to April 27, 2025 at MMCA Seoul.

In partnership with Hyundai Motor Company, PROJECT HASHTAG was launched in 2019 and is now in its fifth year. The project has successfully established itself as a new platform for artistic creation, fostering collaboration among artists, curators, researchers, and other cultural practitioners. This year two teams, Wish Office and Playing Art Method, were selected from among 148 applicants representing diverse fields. Both teams have been working on their projects with the support of KRW 30 million and access to studio space at MMCA Residency Changdong.

Installation view of Wish Office, The Wishes, 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Wish Office (Kim Raeo, Seo John, Seo Jin kyu, Oh Saeol, and Titanium (Choi Joon Seong)) presents a project called Wish World—a metaverse environment where everyone’s wishes can be fulfilled. This project takes the form of a social experiment, reflecting on the often challenging realities of personal struggles in contemporary society through a game-like experience. Visitors to the exhibition have the option to submit their wishes to be processed through an AI classification system and delivered into the Wish World. The fate of this virtual world—whether it thrives or withers—depends on these submitted wishes. The project explores themes of frustration, desire, and hope, reflecting on the feelings of helplessness, powerlessness, and need for recognition experienced by many people. It incorporates popular cultural concepts such as time travel, reincarnation, and transmigration, recently trending in webcomics and online novels. The project simulates what might happen if these “lucky breaks,” known as hoebinghwan (an amalgamation of the words hoegwi [regression], bingui [transmigration], and hwansaeng [reincarnation]), once reserved exclusively for protagonists, were extended to everyone, allowing participants to see the outcomes of these second chances.

Installation view of Playing Art Method, Playing Art Method, 2024. Photo: National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea

Playing Art Method (Cho Hoyoun, Kim Youngju, and Sei Rhee) is a collaboration between Parade & Patchwork, an exhibition planning group led by Rhee Sei, and Loopntale, a media art-based game production team consisting of Cho Hoyoun and Kim Youngju. Playing Art Method proposes a project under the same name to explore the questions that arise when “Video games” are exhibited in an art museum. Through exhibitions, workshops, and animated posters, they aim to generate meaningful discourse on these topics. This project reconsiders the position of games and game developers within the contemporary art ecosystem, establishing branding strategies for these creators. Learning materials that help visitors interpret the meanings within the games are displayed alongside the games themselves, and experts from a range of fields—including poets, game researchers, and art critics—provide insights into the project from various perspectives. These experts act as docents while also showcasing their current or long-term interests, interacting directly with visitors in the exhibition space.

This year’s program also includes a variety of related programs including live game streaming sessions, talks, docent programs, and game walk through workshops in collaboration with experts from different fields. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project, a special event featuring past PROJECT HASHTAG participants will also be held, offering a retrospective look at the significance of interdisciplinary collaboration over the past five years.

Kim Sunghee, director of the MMCA, notes, “Just as hashtags connect different subjects and people in our contemporary digital culture, PROJECT HASHTAG 2024 aims to bring together creators from diverse backgrounds to create new artistic synergies and expand the potential of contemporary art.”

LINK: Wish Office & Playing Art Method: PROJECT HASHTAG 2024

GAME ART: ED FORNELIES’S INSIDE OUT 2 (2024)

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Recently presented at Carlos/Ishikawa gallery in London between May 23 – July 6, 2024, Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2 is an ambitious exploration of the intersections between corporate structures, personal relationships, and digital interactions, presented through a richly narrative-driven multimedia approach. This project extends Fornieles’ continuous investigation into the dynamics of digital and social spheres, previously exemplified in his Dorm Daze project, where participants inhabited fictional Facebook profiles, blurring the lines between personal and fictional identities.

Central to Inside Out 2 is the conceptualization of a company, Fini, as both a work of art and a corporate entity, challenging traditional notions by positioning the company as a medium that generates value through engagement rather than tangible products. The narrative intricately weaves the concept of friendship into corporate dynamics, prompting profound questions about the nature of relationships within commercial and digital contexts. Drawing on the Brazilian Anthropophagy movement, which advocated for the cultural digestion and transformation of colonial influences, Fornieles illustrates how digital and corporate cultures can be absorbed and reinterpreted.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

The gallery space, referred to as The Zone, acts as a transformative environment where objects and concepts are recontextualized, allowing viewers to engage in a suspension of disbelief. Fornieles provocatively suggests that shared hallucinations, or mutual agreements on perceived realities, form the basis of our understanding of the world, thereby challenging the stability of reality itself. The project employs a range of narrative techniques, from cute aesthetics to speculative fiction and historical revisionism, creating a multilayered experience that defies conventional boundaries between fiction and reality.

Installation View, Ed Fornieles, Inside Out 2, Carlos/Ishikawa, 2024
Image © Ed Fornieles, courtesy Carlos/Ishikawa, London. Photographer: Damian Griffiths

Envisioning future expansions, Fornieles introduces the Oom app, positioned at the intersection of messaging and mobile gaming, and a movie that combines live-action with animation, further extending the project  "narrative universe. By discussing the role of venture capital in the growth of new companies, Fornieles draws intriguing parallels between the ambitions of artists and venture capitalists in their shared pursuit of world-building, highlighting the economic and philosophical challenges of sustaining such an innovative endeavor. Inside Out 2 is a complex work that invites viewers to interrogate contemporary culture through the lenses of corporate structures, digital identities, and personal relationships, urging a reconsideration of how we engage with the so-called “digital”.

LINK: Ed Fornieles’s Inside Out 2

EVENT: SARA SADIK (NOVEMBER 30 - DECEMBER 21 2023, MILAN, ITALY)

SARA SADIK

Spazio Maiocchi
via Achille Maiocchi 7 Milan Italy
Free entry, no RSVP required.

Opening: Thursday, 30 November 2023, 7–10 PM
On view: 1–21 December, 2–7 PM

press release

Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer- generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.

At Spazio Maiocchi, the artist will present her new video work titled LA POTION (EH) (2023), a journey through states of anxiety, melancholy, and serenity as experienced by a virtual character—the Avatar Neregy—interpreted by Sadik’s husband, Émile Samory-Fofana. Taking the form of a live-stream gameplay, this internal process of emotional metamorphosis is embodied by the different worlds, tasks, challenges, and struggles the leading character has to complete to obtain psychological healing and transformation.

Commissioned and produced by BMW Open Work, Frieze London.

LINK: Sara Sadik

UPDATE: SARA SADIK'S LA POTION (EH) (2023)

Sara Sadik, LA POTION (EH), video still, 2023

Sara Sadik, LA POTION (EH), video still, 2023

BMW has released a short promotional interview with Sara Sadik who is collaborating with the German auto manufacturer (see previous posts for context):

According to the BMW press release, Sara Sadik's latest work, titled LA POTION (EH), suggests "an emotional shift". Collaborating closely with the BMW gaming (Air Console) and My Modes teams, she envisioned the BMW i5 as a character, specifically the Avatar Neregy, exploring various imaginary realms in both the video game and video format. Such work aligns with Sadik's  ongoing exploration of computer-generated scenarios and her investigation into the evolving emotional states of young male figures, the press releases continues. LA POTION (EH) takes the form of an interactive video game, designed exclusively for the new, fully electric BMW i5 and is simultaneously presented as a video installation, available both on the public-facing terrace of KOKO and inside the BMW Lounge during Frieze London, which runs October 11-15, 2023. The narrative follows the Avatar Neregy, a character experiencing alienation, as he embarks on a journey through different worlds, tasks, and challenges in pursuit of psychological healing and transformation. I guess the idea takeaway is that you are not required to buy a BMW to watch Sadik's artwork. 

Ironically, in her masterwork Khtobtogone (2021), the main dream car is an Audi.

Ah, the perils of branding.

LINK: Sara Sadik - All images of LA POTION (EH) courtesy of the Artist and BMW)