{"id":93657,"date":"2025-09-30T00:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T00:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/93657\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T00:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T00:41:08","slug":"lots-to-play-for-serpentine-exhibition-explores-censorship-and-connection-through-video-games-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/93657\/","title":{"rendered":"Lots to play for: Serpentine exhibition explores censorship and connection through video games – The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visitors will have to make difficult decisions in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s exhibition The Delusion, which opens today at Serpentine North in London (until 18 January 2026). London-born Brathwaite-Shirley, a Berlin-based artist and video game designer, has created a series of multiplayer video games that invite \u201cplayers to examine their own ethical, political and moral choices while considering broader societal structures and histories of marginalisation\u201d, says an exhibition text.<\/p>\n

For The Unifier game, players must place their hands on a table and work together to move a ball through maze-like structures while pondering issues such as \u201cWhat should be censored?\u201d The purpose of this communal exercise is to \u201crehumanise connection and enable honest exchange\u201d, adds the exhibition text.<\/p>\n

The installation is timely in the wake of geo-political ruptures in Western society, with populist parties on the rise across Europe and President Trump clamping down on diversity and equity initiatives at US museums. <\/p>\n

Brathwaite-Shirley feels we are in a moment where the ability to speak freely is being curtailed. \u201cIt feels like we can\u2019t have a discussion without risking something anymore,\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley tells The Art Newspaper. \u201cIt feels instead like we come with a prepared opinion rather than trying to figure out what we actually think and that\u2019s a problem.\u201d <\/p>\n

In another game, entitled The Validators, participants respond by shooting lamp-shaped guns at a screen while instructions flash up on a screen such as: \u201cRaise your hand if you feel worried about censorship.\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley says: \u201cWe have taken an arcade shooter and made it into a contemplative thinking game rather than a violent game. There are three levels\u2014one level touches on censorship, another on dehumanisation and another on hope.\u201d The work incorporates factual and fictional content drawn from the daily news cycle.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

An installation view of The Validators<\/p>\n

\u00a9 Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley. Photo: Hugo Glendinning<\/p>\n

The exhibition, organised by the Serpentine\u2019s technology arm (Serpentine Arts Technologies), highlights the 21st-century crossover between video games and the visual arts. \u201cI\u2019ve always seen games as art. I was looking at a game called Frontier: Elite II, made in 1989\u2014I look at old games as pieces of art and look at them the same as someone might study a Rembrandt,\u201d Brathwaite-Shirley says.<\/p>\n

The video games were developed collaboratively with a team of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s Black trans and queer community, according to a statement. The exhibition, through some of the question posed by its games, builds on Brathwaite-Shirley’s ongoing work archiving Black trans histories: in 2020, the artist founded the Black trans archive\u2014a first-person game that functions as an archive, turning the idea of traditional repositories on their head. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Visitors will have to make difficult decisions in Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley\u2019s exhibition The Delusion, which opens today at Serpentine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[267],"tags":[365,362,363,364,366,18,117,966,19,17,30070,60634,3880],"class_list":{"0":"post-93657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-exhibitions","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-serpentine-gallery","19":"tag-trans-non-binary-artists","20":"tag-video-games"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}