Ctrl + ↑ for Coyote Time / Curated by Jen Kratochvil, Borbála Szalai, Maxine Vajt
Bassam Al-Sabah, Hollow (Gyula Muskovics, Tamás Páll, Viktor Szeri), Denis Kozerawski (with Kristína Jamrichová, Ondřej Mohyla, Martina Růžičková), Lawrence Lek, Paula Malinowska, Tabitha Nikolai, Sin Wai Kin
22 March - 7 April 2024
Liliom u. 41
1094 Budapest
Hollow: Letter from the Glass Desert, 2024 (mixed media, video, 3’40”) | photo: Máté Kalicz
We look down and realize that we've run over the edge of the cliff, the abyss is below us. What do we do? What can we do? Is there by any chance a keyboard shortcut for this?
Jumping forward from this moment of suspension, the exhibition Ctrl+Up for Coyote Time asks whether it is possible to imagine worlds – digital or physical – where the rules by which we 'play' can be redefined. Where the hegemonic play and the failed normative goals of videogames can be transcended, where the systems of rules can be reimagined, where individual and shared experiences -that are both political and deeply personal- can be lived.
Questions of how mainstream gaming formulates daily routines of our lives meet more specific challenges to the basic principles of gamification and world-building used as a toolbox for normalized existence in late capitalism - how to disrupt, take apart, and reconfigure them to counteract the system they originated from? The exhibition explores the boundaries and adjacent niches of the continuous bleeding of digital and physical reality into each other; a probe into hegemonic play and its deconstruction through queer and trans methods and strategies; an elaborate ploy to reach the state when time freezes, and you keep levitating, and a the second jump appears to be an option.
Professional partner: Háttér Society
Supported by: Háttér Society, United States Department of State, the National Cultural Fund of Hungary, Czech Centre Budapest, Káli Kövek