Art Survivors

2024

FPS action video game

​ // Art Survivors (2024), an interactive FPS (first-person shooter) game newly created by Mak2 that invites its audience virtually into the world of a fictional art fair. Filled with the artist’s own AI-generated artworks, what begins as a familiar cultural experience quickly escalates into a fight for survival – all the non-player characters have turned into zombies. Players must navigate through the fair and eliminate infected fair attendees, battling for victory in a place once of creative expression and appreciation, now turned into a labyrinth for survival.  As the living dead charge at you wearing business casual outfits, the immersive storytelling of the game becomes as thought-provoking as it is thrilling. Synthesizing the imagined tranquility of an art fair with the chaotic absurdity of a zombie outbreak, the artwork posits a humorous hyperbole of certain invisible dynamics. Complete with rankings of both the best and worst players as well as droll reenactments of common art-fair-incited behaviors, the game magnifies and examines the aspects of competition, hierarchy, trauma, and strategy that are interwoven into the starry-eyed illusion of art. Art Survivors, however, is not just a tongue-in-cheek comment on art’s Darwinist, dog-eat-dog world. It is, more importantly, a reminder of the ultimate objective: To stay alive without becoming one of the infected – and with the right adjustment to mindset, maybe even have fun. //

https://www.desarthe.com/exhibitions/art%20survivors/press