Group Hug

Featuring: “Feral Metaverse” by Theo Triantafyllidis “THE LACK: I KNEW YOUR VOICE BEFORE YOU SPOKE” by Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley “The Endless Forest” by Tale of Tales (Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn) 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. 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. “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. “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.