Artist: Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Serpentine presents THE DELUSION, the most ambitious project to date by London and Berlin-based British artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.

THE DELUSION will debut a groundbreaking video game commission, a multiplayer immersive experience run on game engines that explores themes of polarisation, censorship and social connection.

THE DELUSION will combine satire and absurd humour with cooperative gaming and participatory theatre to explore the real-world impacts of societal division.

Placing the audience at the heart of the experience, the project invites participants to pause, discuss, and reconnect. Conceived as a live “community play” and meeting space, the exhibition will encourage open discussions, shared reflections, and ways to engage with some of the most challenging sociopolitical issues we face today.

THE DELUSION brings together artists, researchers, technologists and members of Brathwaite-Shirley's Black Trans and Queer community. The project combines advanced technologies with older or ‘obsolete’ techniques, including 2D and 3D sprite animation and the open-source, community-built game engine UPBGE (Uchronia Project Blender Game Engine).

This project continues Serpentine’s engagement and support of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s practice, including a significant period of R&D in 2021, developing prototypes and experimental hybrid gaming projects including WE CAN’T DO THIS ALONE, YOUR PRESENCE ALONE CHANGES HOW OTHERS BREATHE, and THE LACK, co-commissioned by Art Night, NeON Digital Arts and Serpentine Arts Technologies for Art Night Dundee 2023.

Blending fact with speculative fiction, the original narrative concept for the project was a zine developed by the artist, called ‘Below the Blue Line’, set in a post-apocalyptic fictional world at a moment of great turmoil: a new era called ‘Peace by Isolation’.

The project marks the continuation of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ ongoing commitment to exploring the creative and civic potential of video game technologies. An area of focus for the department is game engines and expanded forms of gaming that exist between both digital and physical contexts. Previous projects have included: Ian Cheng, Bad Corgi (2015) and B.O.B. (2018), Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Catharsis (2020); Trust, Hivemind (2022), and Gabriel Massan & Collaborators, Third World: The Bottom Dimension (2023) that has been touring since its first presentation at Serpentine North in 2023.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley says: “THE DELUSION is about having difficult conversations. How can we use interactivity to offer a space for this? How can we make galleries functional again, supporting what emerges during a show as the work itself? We’re working at a weird frontier of games, trying to break the expectations for games to be fun. Rather than a place to lose yourselves in, this game facilitates an environment I'm calling a ‘human engine’, that allows people to work through difficult emotions and feelings. We’re using game engines and interactivity to pull people out of the virtual world and instead allow them to ground themselves in the physical world and what’s going on at this present moment. The work is not about what’s in the games, it’s about what comes out of people’s mouths, enabling new connections and conversations in real-time.

Art should provide a safe space for grappling with real issues without anxiety or fear but we’re in danger of losing that. THE DELUSION is an exercise of anti-censorship. It’s an exercise of freedom to speak out and question things to make an environment for other people to feel like they can do the same. It expands my concern with social and historical erasure, but it’s also a challenge to myself - not to erase certain conversations, people or views that I may disagree with. The work is a place to view yourself and a mirror of society - and it’s messy! I’m focused on what archives can do and how they can function. How they can be used to allow people to process life and not be something that’s stuck in the past or on the screen. THE DELUSION centres the decisions, actions and change happening in the gallery itself.”

Bettina Korek, CEO, Serpentine, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, say: “We are thrilled to provide Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley with a platform for this groundbreaking live experiment. THE DELUSION embodies everything Serpentine stands for: a place of exciting experimentation, where new connections between artists and audiences come to life. Brathwaite-Shirley’s visionary use of gaming and participatory performance to explore polarisation, censorship, and hope reflects the urgent conversations shaping our world today. This commission continues Serpentine Arts Technologies’ commitment to pushing the boundaries of art and technology, while also showcasing the institution’s ongoing leadership in R&D.”

THE DELUSION will transform the gallery into an immersive installation that hosts and activates the new video game commission conceived by Brathwaite-Shirley and collaborators.

Visitors will be initiated into the experience through a set of Terms and Conditions that open the exhibition. At its centre are a collection of new multiplayer video games that function as portals through which players can enter deeper into this speculative world. The games are ‘mods’ of classic arcade or cooperative games such as Monkey Ball, with bespoke controllers designed by the artist together with Ivaylo Getov and Vincent Moulinet.

As visitors move through the space, a series of prompts and exercises will shift their experience, turning the gallery into a live theatrical space. Embracing improvisation as a critical method and welcoming the complexity of lived experience, THE DELUSION explores what it truly means to live together. Danielle invites engagement in honest and difficult conversations that ‘feed’ the game’s engine, encouraging reconnection with others in real time. Soundtracks by Loraine James will ground visitors in one of the three emotional moods through which the experience is available.

The environment’s visual language draws on the artist’s personal history, religious and spiritual symbols, and historical propaganda. It is interwoven with elements of horror including the 1990s game Paratopic and The Backrooms. The space is conceived in collaboration with set designer Lydia Chan.

THE DELUSION archives recent news headlines and social media posts, conversations with spiritual leaders and social activists, and testimonies from Brathwaite-Shirley’s community, alongside the artist’s own autobiographical notes, to reflect wide-ranging and diverse perspectives.

The exhibition also features original ink drawings, and newly commissioned works, including a stained-glass piece that narrates the story of the game world’s inciting incident: the ‘Day of Division’, and a series of sculptural effigies.

A dedicated reading space will offer access to the project’s originating zine, early sketches, and development materials, alongside selected texts from the artist’s community.

Alongside the exhibition, Serpentine will release a major publication co-published with Archive Books. The book will offer intimate insight into the project in a gamified interactive style and will also be the artist's first official monograph. Contributors include Rebecca Allen, Barby Asante, Tamar Clarke-Brown, Shenece Oretha, Legacy Russell, Ebun Sodipo, Helen Starr, Mindy Seu, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Kay Watson and McKenzie Wark. The book is edited by Tamar Clarke-Brown with Cairo Clarke, Managing Editor and designed by Jamie Reid Studio. A Limited Edition will also accompany the exhibition.

THE DELUSION is commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies, led by Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies. This project is curated and led by Tamar Clarke-Brown, Curator, Arts Technologies, with Ruth Waters, Arts Technologies Producer and Vi Trinh, Arts Technologies Assistant Curator, with additional support from Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator.

It will also be supported by the Future Art Ecosystems initiative in the development of technical, legal and creative R&D to be shared with the wider cultural sector led by Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead and Tommie Introna, R&D Producer.