Studio DEMO x Rhizome: Role Playing As Praxis

Artists have long treated play as a serious, expansive practice. Working outside commercial gaming, they’ve developed a distinct field: visually rich, critically alive, and economically viable on its own terms. Studio DEMO x Rhizome sessions offer a glimpse of past and future forms of the “artist-made game”.

How often do we find ourselves inhabiting other forms? Virtually, as our screen names and signifiers rotate by the hour, and physically, as we code-switch, customizing our faces, bodies, and language in response to the accelerated conditions of contemporary media. This conversation brings together artists whose practices blur the boundaries between character and self, simulation and lived experience. Ranging from machinima and costume design to immersive installation and Indigenous futures, Caratoes, Jacky Connolly, and Skawennati each embody characters as tools for expanding empathy, authoring new realities, and reclaiming who gets to appear in the story.

Studio DEMO is a live broadcast hub at the New Museum, open to drop into throughout the day and available via livestream. Featuring NEW INC's wider creative community, broadcasts take the form of talks, demonstrations, couch conversations, panel discussions, DJ sets, and more. This year, NEW INC partners with peer organizations to build thematic programming for Studio DEMO. Partners include Geidai Project, Onassis Foundation, Rhizome, Serpentine, YoungArts.