Group Hug
Concept art for “Feral Metaverse” by Connor Willumsen
Presented with Water Street Projects
Featuring:
“Feral Metaverse” by Theo Triantafyllidis
“THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE” by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
“The Endless Forest” by Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn)
Exhibition Details:
Location: 161 Water St, Floor 3 - Entrance on Water & John St
Dates: September 26 to October 20, 2024
Opening Hours: September 26th, 7 - 10PM RSVP
Public Hours: Thursday - Sunday 1-7PM
Exhibition Info:
Onassis ONX is pleased to announce Group Hug, a landmark exhibition of large-scale, site-specific video game installations. Presented with Water Street Projects in collaboration with curator Julia Kaganskiy, Serpentine Arts Technologies, and Rhizome, the exhibition invites visitors to play together and lose themselves in the sensorial worlds of each game through sight, sound, and touch.
Across each game, players must learn to communicate and cooperate in order to discover and survive unfamiliar worlds. Group Hug is inspired by the idea of radical collaboration, with each work elevating group play over traditional individualistic game logic. The exhibition also activates our model for collaborative curation, uniting unique creative perspectives from artists in one space. Group Hug will also feature a public programming series during the run of the exhibition that will be announced in early September.
More details to come, but please check out more info about the featured projects below!
"Feral Metaverse" Theo Triantafyllidis
Still from “Feral Metaverse” courtesy of Theo Triantafyllidis
Project Information: In “Feral Metaverse” players are dropped defenseless into a disorienting wasteland, and must learn to rely on one another to survive. In defiance of traditional game tropes and tech industry’s prioritization of productivity, Triantafyllidis envisioned a “feralized” world, which favors disinhibition and cooperation between users, leading them to experience the joy of synchronicity and communication. Featuring a site-specific gaming rig that takes the shape of a medieval catapult, the installation prompts players to become part of the great machine, and work together to discover the rules of the game. “Feral Metaverse” is curated for Group Hug by Julia Kaganskiy.
Artist Bio: Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988 Athens, GR) is an artist who works with digital and physical media to explore the experience of space and the mechanics of embodiment in hybrid realities. Utilizing algorithms and game engines, virtual reality headsets and experimental performance processes, he creates interactions within immersive environments. In Triantafyllidis’s worlds awkward interactions and precarious physics mingle with uncanny, absurd and poetic situations, inviting the viewer to engage with new realities.
Through the lens of monster theory, Triantafyllidis investigates themes of isolation, sexuality and violence in their visceral extremities. He offers computational humor and AI improvisation as a response to the tech industry’s agenda. He tries to give back to the online and gaming communities that he considers both the inspiration and context for his work by remaining an active participant and contributor.
Triantafyllidis holds an MFA from UCLA, Design Media Arts and a Diploma of Architecture from the National Technical University of Athens. He has shown work in museums, including House of electronic Arts in Basel, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and NRW Forum in Dusseldorf and galleries such as Meredith Rosen Gallery, The Breeder and Nagel Draxler. He was part of the 2021 Athens Biennale: Eclipse, Berliner Festspiele 2021, Sundance New Frontier 2020 and Hyper Pavilion in the 2017 Venice Biennale.
"THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE" Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Still from “THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE” courtesy of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Project Information: “THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE” was inspired by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s love for choose-your-own adventure games, with players’ decisions influencing every element of their surrounding world’s reconstruction. The installation includes a performance component, featuring bespoke dance mats as video game controllers, and sound generated by players. Brathwaite-Shirley seeks to create an environment of active participation in which the audience is as much the medium as the games she crafts. The Lack for Group Hug is curated by Serpentine Arts Technologies. Originally co-commissioned for Art Night Dundee, 2023 by Art Night, NEoN Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies.
Artist Bio: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (b. 1995, london) is a Berlin/London-based artist. They received an BA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2019. Brathwaite-Shirley works predominantly in animation, sound, performance, and video game development. Their practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell the stories of Black Trans people. Danielle’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions and performances at institutions such as Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2024), LAS, Burghein berlin (2024), ,Studio Voltaire (2024), SCAD, Savanna (2023) Artnight Dundee (2023) Villa Arson, Nice (2023) Fact, liverpool (2022) David Kordansky, LA (2022) Project Arts Centre, Ireland (2022); Skänes konstförening, Malmö, Sweden (2022); Arebyte Gallery, London (2021); QUAD, Derby, England (2021); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2021); Focal Point Gallery, London (2020); Science Gallery, London (2020); and MU Hybrid Art House, London (2020). Their work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (2022); Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich (2019); Les Urbaines, Lausanne (2019); and Barbican, London (2018).
"The Endless Forest" Tale of Tales
Still from “The Endless Forest” courtesy of Tale of Tales
Project Information: “The Endless Forest” is a multiplayer online game and social screensaver, in which players wander an endless forest as deer. In this dreamlike world, there are no rules or goals, only peaceful exploration and interaction with other players. Designed by Tale of Tales, a games development studio founded by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, the game has maintained an active community of users for nearly two decades. “The Endless Forest” is curated by Rhizome for Group Hug.
Artist Bios: Auriea studied sculpture at Parson's in New York and Michael graphic design at Sint-Lucas in Ghent. They have used computers since Windows 3.1 and Mac System 7. When the web was born, Auriea started entropy8.com and Michael zuper.com. In 1999 they met online as members of the hell.com artists collective and promptly merged both art and life. As Entropy8Zuper! the net.art duo created projects such as Skinonskinonskin and The Godlove Museum, currently on rhizome.org. In 2000 the couple received the SFMOMA Prize for Excellence in Online Art. A few years later, Harvey and Samyn turned to videogames as Tale of Tales and published art game classics as The Endless Forest, The Graveyard and The Path. In 2014 their Luxuria Superbia won the IGF Nuovo prize and in 2018 Indiecade gave them the Trailblazer award. Since 2015, Michael has focused on virtual reality and Auriea on digital sculpture. In 2019 the couple moved from Ghent to Rome. In January of 2024 they married in the Catholic Church.
Exhibition Partners
About Water Street Projects Water Street Projects (WSP) is a roving interdisciplinary platform amplifying creative voices. Our projects include performance art, fairs, festivals, music shows, culinary experiences and visual arts which champion diversity and global points of view. Our fluid and expansive attitude for entertainment and education invokes the spirit of Cedric Price’s never-realized Fun Palace commissioned by Joan Littlewood — a forum for a laboratory of fun and a university of the streets.
About Julia Kaganskiy Julia Kaganskiy is a curator and cultural strategist working across art, science, and technology since 2009. She is currently Curator-at-Large at LAS Art Foundation in Berlin, and is working on exhibitions at Matadero Madrid and Haus der Elektronic Kunst in Basel. At Dunkunsthalle, she serves as Acting Director alongside artist Rachel Rossin. Julia was previously the founding director of NEW INC, the first museum-led cultural incubator, an initiative of the New Museum in New York. Her curatorial work explores the potential of art as a key interlocutor of emerging science and technology, facilitating critical inquiry and aesthetic exploration. She has curated numerous exhibitions and realized new art-science commissions with 180 the Strand (London), Borusan Contemporary (Istanbul), Fundación Telefonica (Madrid), Matadero (Madrid), Science Gallery (Dublin), Nokia Bell Labs (New Jersey), Accenture Labs (Dublin), and Eyebeam Center for Art & Technology (New York).
About Serpentine Arts Technologies Serpentine’s Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies and convenes people working in art, technology, law, policy, and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society.
The foundation of the programme is in an evolving R&D Platform that nurtures innovation for future art ecologies by securing a crucial institutional space for pragmatic interventions and necessary risk-taking at the intersection of art, science and technology. This is achieved through dedicated research labs, knowledge-sharing with the wider sector through Future Art Ecosystems, and co-facilitation of a national Creative R&D Working Group.
About Rhizome Rhizome is an online arts organization that archives, commissions, and contextualizes digital art, with the unofficial motto “digital art everywhere, for everybody.” Founded by artist Mark Tribe as an email discussion list including some of the first artists to work online, Rhizome has played an integral role in the history of contemporary art engaged with digital technologies and the internet. Rhizome hosts the 7x7 art and technology initiative, and supports the legacy A partner of the New Museum since 2003, Rhizome’s programs take place on the web and in NYC and beyond.
For general inquiries: contact@onx.studio For media inquiries: onassis.onx@culturalcounsel.com
