EVENT: DREAMLAND: RECONSTRUCTING ABSENT PRESENCE (SEPTEMBER 16–NOVEMBER 16 2026, HANGZHOU, CHINA)

Dreamland: Reconstructing Absent Presence
Curated by Wang Xiaoyong and Ren Yue
Central Art Museum, Hangzhou
September 16–November 16, 2026

Central Art Museum, Hall A, L3, Hangzhou Center
150 Zhanlan East Road, Gongshu District, Hangzhou

Rhett Tsai’s Yesterday’s Skybox: NBA LIVE 2005 1-On-1 System Modification (2026) has acquired a room.

First presented through VRAL as a machinima and modified videogame, the work now appears in its first museum installation as part of Dreamland: Reconstructing Absent Presence, curated by Wang Xiaoyong and Ren Yue at Central Art Museum in Hangzhou, China. The exhibition runs from September 16 through November 16, 2026.

Tsai has reconstructed the kind of domestic computing environment in which NBA LIVE 2005 circulated in China during the 2000s: a Lenovo Jiayue U4001A desktop from 2007 running Windows XP, a Tsinghua Unisplendour monitor, a period computer desk, speakers, an aging power strip, Chinese videogame guidebooks and stacks of pirated PC discs. Most of these objects were located through Xianyu, China’s large second-hand marketplace. The modified game now runs amid the material culture that once conditioned its reception.

This new configuration extends the logic of Yesterday’s Skybox in a direction that the screen-based version could only imply...