Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, ‘Worldbuilding: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age’ at the Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, explores how artists can embrace and subvert the visual language and culture of video gamesCourtesy of the artist and Sadie Coles, London.
Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator of ‘Worldbuilding’ at the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf, says that the work ‘implicates the viewer’ in ways more traditional artworks may struggle to. Video games are less than 65 years old, the very first a basic spermatoid of the full-grown digi-splendour we experience now; it seems a very recent history while simultaneously rooted in our very modern cultural senses of identity.
Walking around the gallery in Düsseldorf, that Banham quote has become true – this is a place about play. But here, play is considered, cultured, and meaningful. ‘If Richard Hamilton lived today, he’d certainly be interested in this phenomenon, there is no doubt whatsoever,’ Obrist tells me, explaining that the roots of the project come from conversations he had decades ago with Hamilton, theatre-maker Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price.
Some artists are archaeologists digging in the pits of decades-gone digital entertainment. The show opens with a Sturtevant work that reimagines Pac-Man as an artist-devouring auto-destructive demon, while Peggy Ahwesh grabs footage of an early Lara Croft struggling in a polygonal world, and uses it to create a deeply traumatic and emotional treatise on relentless death, rebirth, and struggle. I associated with it as both a bad Tomb Raider and as someone with existential angst.