Discover contemporary art beyond expectations while exploring the metaverse of video games with Open Systems (OS), Singapore Art Museum’s (SAM) first virtual initiative.
Director of SAM, Eugene Tan, says, “We hope to inspire renewed perspectives and foster dialogue on the future of art and newfound communities in contemporary virtual terrains.”
Opensystems.sg hosts 18 artworks featuring artists and thinkers from 14 countries reimagining virtual environments through film, music videos, video essays, and games. These show how economic and social inequality can be observed online.
The first iteration of Open Systems 1_Open Worlds (OS1), a virtual exhibition, explores the relationship between real and virtual worlds. According to Duncan Bass, curator of OS, OS1 seeks to expand conventional expectations about digital exhibitions and metaverse discourse. It also invites audiences to reflect on their position as media consumers.
With six themed chapters and three new artist projects each fortnight, it is an introspective stab at open-world gaming, and explores new ways to enact social, political, and spatial organisation by addressing issues like artificial scarcity and inequalities that transcend lived and digital spaces.
OS1.1_Virtual Capital
Until May 18 2023
(Lawrence Lek, Alice Bucknell, Bahar Noorizadeh, Rudá Babau, and Waste Paper Opera)
Through satirical storytelling and sci-fi narratives, the first chapter focuses on global capitalism and virtual economies, and reveals how virtual cultures affect real-life experiences.
OS1.2_WoW, Unite!
May 18 to Jun 1
(Cat Bluemke, Joshua Citarella and Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman, Mario Mu)
Video games act as unexpected forms of collective organisation and reference the cry for solidarity – “Workers of the world, unite!” – alluding to World of Warcraft (WoW). Labour rights issues and organisational conditions are highlighted in game essays and videos.
OS1.3_Landscapes of the Political Imaginary
Jun 1 to 15
(Zheng Mahler, Shabtai Pinchevsky, Firas Shehadeh)
This chapter invites viewers to reassess their understanding of video games and the assumptions embedded in them. It features OS’ first video game commission, “The Green Crab: A Diagram of Auspicious Spatial Organisation” by Mahler.
OS1.4_Unrealpolitik
Jun 15 to 29
(Yeyoon Avis Ann and George Chua, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Grayson Earle)
Playing on the 3D computer graphics engine “Unreal Engine” and the “realpolitik” politics of the early 1990s, Unrealpolitik examines the tension between video games’ exaggerated images of violence and the sterility of their virtual cityscapes.
OS1.5_Dematerialised Zones
Jun 29 to Jul 13
(Hayoun Kwon, Total Refusal, Antoine Chapon)
The penultimate chapter explores conflict sites as liminal spaces to subvert stereotypical perceptions of violence associated with video games.
OS1.6_Intimate Encounters
Jul 13 to 27
(Sara Sadik, Kara Güt, Xafiér Yap)
The final series of artworks examines notions of identity and intimacy through role-playing games similar to how we develop our identities through relationships.
