Cory Arcangel's Space Invader in group exhibition at Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf

31 May 2022

Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Julia Stoschek Collection, the group exhibition 'WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age' opens in Düsseldorf on 4 June.

WORLDBUILDING examines the relationship between gaming and time-based media art, journeying through the various ways in which artists have interacted with video games. In the words of Hans Ulrich Obrist: “In 2021 2.8 billion people—almost a third of the world’s population—played video games, making a niche pasttime into the biggest mass phenomenon of our time. Many people spend hours every day in a parallel world and live a multitude of different lives. Video games are to the twenty-first century what movies were to the twentieth century and novels to the nineteenth century.”

Cory Arcangel's Space Invader is a modification of the Atari game Space Invaders, in which all invaders have been erased except one. This makes the game impossible to play, as the invader inherits bullets from all the others, the average game lasting about 1 minute.

WORLDBUILDING continues through 10 December 2023. Find further information here.