At Watershed, six teenagers curated the games on show
SENTIENTS just closed at Undershed, with work by Marshmallow Laser Feast, David OReilly, Alice Bucknell, Alan Kwan and Demelza Kooij.
The kids are alright. For SENTIENTS, at Watershed’s Undershed gallery in Bristol, the venue handed selection to young curators from five schools across the city and let the themes that mattered to them—ecology, climate change, identity, imagination—decide what got shown. Watershed’s announcement is a lovely inversion. institutions program games about young people constantly. Almost none let them do the canon-forming.
What a great selection! Marshmallow Laser Feast’s In the Eyes of the Animal runs you through a forest as mosquito, dragonfly, frog and owl, a haptic vest buzzing in sync. Alan Kwan’s Scent casts you as a dog gathering the souls of the dead in a city after conflict—“what it means to witness without power,” in Kwan’s words. David OReilly’s Everything is here, a decade on from when we wrote that it reminds us we’re not the center of the universe. Alice Bucknell’s The Alluvials has you prowling a climate-wrecked Los Angeles as a wolf, and Demelza Kooij’s Wolves From Above films a real pack from the air, playing in the welcome area.
SENTIENTS opened July 18 and ran through Sunday, September 13, tickets pay what you can from £5. Bristol 24/7 has the names of the five schools the curators came from.
In the Eyes of the Animal, Scent, Everything, The Alluvials and Wolves From Above. Images via Watershed
Games entering galleries is the beat Killscreen has covered since 2010. The free Radar letter tracks every show like this one.
