A new video game commission and multiplayer immersive experience from Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley that explores themes of polarisation, censorship and social connection.
“Let’s have the difficult conversations” – Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Enter a fractured future – a new era called ‘Peace by Isolation’.
THE DELUSION combines satire and absurd humour with cooperative gaming and participatory theatre to explore the real-world impacts of societal division. Artist and game designer Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley invites visitors into a post-apocalyptic world shaped by a single catastrophic event—the Day of Division. In this imagined future, society has broken into closed, dogmatic factions, each clinging to its own version of truth, community, and survival. Conceived as a “live community play” and meeting space, the project aims to rehumanise debates and provide a space for players to pause, discuss and reconnect.
Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies, this is Brathwaite-Shirley’s most ambitious work to date — featuring a new series of video games and works developed collaboratively over the course of the past year with a team of artists, researchers, technologists and members of Danielle’s Black Trans and Queer community.
Visitors will be welcomed into an immersive installation designed in collaboration with Lydia Chan that blends the artists’ personal history, religious and spiritual symbols and elements of horror.
THE DELUSION builds on Brathwaite-Shirley’s urgent and ongoing work archiving Black Trans histories through game environments. Drawing on both advanced and ‘obsolete’ technologies—including the community-built open-source game engine UPGBE — the project furthers exploration into the creative and civic potential of video games.
Set in Hyde Park, home of the historic Speaker’s Corner, one of the last such remaining destinations for public speaking and debate in the UK, the project centres the role of the “audience as medium”, asking how we relate, respond, and resist when faced with collapsing systems and distorted realities.
Artist Biography
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (b. 1995, London) lives and works between Berlin and London. Working predominantly in animation, sound, performance and video game development, and with a background in DIY print media and activism, the artist’s practice focuses on intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell and archive the stories of Black Trans people. Danielle utilizes interactive technologies to create participatory spaces that challenge traditional narratives and encourage active engagement. Their projects often take the form of immersive video games, where players navigate choices that confront their assumptions and biases, fostering deeper conversations about identity, privilege, and systemic oppression. Through their innovative use of digital media, Danielle not only preserves histories but also envisions inclusive futures where the voices of those that are ignored or erased are central. Their work is both ‘archive and insurgency’, a catalyst for dialogue, inviting audiences to reflect on their roles within broader societal structures.
Danielle has presented recent solo exhibitions at institutions such as LAS Foundation, Halle am Berghain, Berlin (2024); Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2024); Studio Voltaire, London (2024); Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève (2024); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2023); Villa Arson, Nice (2023); HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2023); FACT, Liverpool (2022); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2022); Skänes konstförening, Malmö (2022); Arebyte Gallery, London (2021); QUAD, Derby (2021); Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea (2020). Her/their work has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2024); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul (2023); Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York (2023); Das Centre Pompidou, Metz (2023); Julia Stoschek Foundation, Berlin (2022); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2021); Les Urbaines, Lausanne (2019); and Barbican, London (2018). Her/their work has been the subject of screenings and performances at institutions including Tate Modern, London (2024, 2020); MoMA, New York (2023); DePaul Art Museum, Chicago (2023); Serpentine, London (2022); Spike Island, Bristol (2022); and South London Gallery (2022). Permanent collections include the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Forthcoming projects include a solo exhibition at Serpentine North, London (2025).
Collaborator Biographies
Tatenda Shamiso is a writer, actor and theatre maker with origins from Zimbabwe, Belgium, the US and Switzerland. A self-described “silly little guy with a load of Black trans joy,” he centres his work around themes of community, identity and joy within the diaspora. In 2023, Tatenda won the Emerging Talent Award at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, and in 2024, the Theatre Writing Fellowship at the Arts Foundation Futures Awards, both off the back of his breakout hit play NO I.D., which had a critically acclaimed, sell-out run at the Royal Court in London. Tatenda is now developing the TV adaptation of NO I.D. with Fifth Season, and has served in writersrooms on two new comedy series for Channel 4. Previously in theatre, Tatenda served as Assistant Director on the hit revival of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, starring Paul Mescal and Anjana Vasan at the Almeida Theatre, and its West End transfer; he also starred as an actor in the Young Vic’s SUNDOWN KIKI RELOADED; and served as Associate Director on CHOIR BOY at the Bristol Old Vic. Last year he served as Associate Director on the West End run of FOR BLACK BOYS at the Garrick Theatre, and as Assistant Director on Daniel Bailey’s play at The Bush Theatre, WOLVES ON ROAD.
Travis Alabanza is a writer, performer and theatre maker from Bristol. For stage, Travis wrote and performed in their debut show Burgerz which won the Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, sold out at Southbank Centre and Traverse Theatre and toured internationally.
Their play Overflow, which premiered at and streamed from The Bush, was met with critical acclaim including numerous four-star reviews and was shortlisted for the George Devine Award. Their latest theatre commission, Sound of the Underground, premiered as part of the Royal Court’s new season in 2023 to critical acclaim. For screen, Travis is developing projects with Lookout Point and See Saw. Travis is also part of the BFI FLARE Dark Room Lab for 2025.
Travis’ debut book None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary was published in 2022 by Canongate and in the US by Feminist Press in 2023. It won the Jhalak Literary Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and was listed in TIME Magazine’s 100 books of 2023.
Their work has also earned them a place on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list 2021, the Dazed100 list and in 2023 as an Evening Standard’s future stars of stage and screen.
Loraine James – – not Lorraine James, Loraine Jones, or any other common misspelling – began developing her musical language early in life. Growing up on Enfield’s iconic and colourful Alma Estate in North London, she was surrounded by a plethora of parallel cultures, and thanks to her mum’s obsession with anything from heavy metal to calypso, James was able to experience music from the driver’s seat. She learned to play the piano as a teenager, frequenting emo, pop and math rock shows before teaching herself electronic music production with a MIDI keyboard and a laptop. In her low-key home studio, James channeled her wide range of interests into a personal sound that in time evolved into an identifiable signature.
That signature began to emerge on 2017’s “Detail”, and James refined it over a run of releases that netted global acclaim, subtly hybridizing R&B, drill, pop and IDM forms. Her breakthrough album “For You & I” and its intimate follow-up “Reflection” were released on iconic British label Hyperdub and praised for their vital narratives that accurately portrayed her reality as an independent queer, Black, British artist. With Gentle Confrontation, Loraine’s third album for Hyperdub, she let us into a new chapter of her real and sonic life in which she examines her past and present. She says this is the record a teenage Loraine would like to have made, the album’s musical tendencies reflect that time too.
Alongside this output, she explored another path entirely, adopting the moniker Whatever The Weather for her ambient music-inspired Ghostly International debut in 2022, which was explored further in the follow-up ‘Whatever The Weather II’. Constantly shifting, James is an unpredictable force whose experimental approach is struck through with vulnerability, curiosity and hope.
Shaznay Martin is a London-based screenwriter, journalist, producer, and emerging director dedicated to pushing the boundaries of representation on and off screen.
Passionate about exploring the nuance of the Black and marginalised experience, Shaznay is committed to seeing underrepresented demographics—Black, female, queer, and working-class people—as protagonists in genres where they’ve been historically sidelined. Her work often pairs high-concept storytelling with human depth, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and connection.
Her short films have featured at prestigious festivals, including BFI Flare, and her latest project, NOIR, is set for a 2025 festival run. After developing her debut feature script through the BFI-funded The Dark Room development lab, Shaznay is now building a slate of television and feature films at her co-founded production company, aiming to establish a creative legacy of thought-provoking stories that challenge boundaries and celebrate authenticity and innovation.
Brooke Maggs is a narrative designer and consultant for interactive experiences and video games. She is the Narrative Lead for the Max Payne remake with Remedy Entertainment, and has previously worked on award-winning video games such as Control and The Gardens Between. She has also worked with artists, galleries and museums, like the Melbourne Museum, to design stories and interactivity into exhibition spaces.
Malik Nashad Sharpe is a choreographer and movement director working with dance, dark fantasy, and horror. Creating primarily underneath the alias Marikiscrycrycry, he makes provocative performance works that are formally engaged with construction of affect, atmosphere, and dramaturgy from more marginal perspectives. He graduated with a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honours from Williams College, and holds a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. His works address violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, belonging, and the horizon and his many works have been widely presented across the U.K., Europe, Canada, and the USA. His work has been commissioned by The Yard Theatre (U.K.), Theatre La Chapelle (CA), Festival Trans-Amerique (CA), New Queers on the Block (U.K.), Marlborough Productions (U.K.), Dansehallerne (DK), MDT (SK), Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts (U.K.), Dance4 (U.K.), The Place (U.K.), Theatre in the Mill (U.K.), Fierce Festival (U.K.), CCN Caen (FR), Block Universe (U.K.), Dansehallerne (DK), MDT (SE), Cambridge Junction (U.K.), Roskilde Festival (DK), amongst many others. He has shown his work in venues including Battersea Arts Centre (U.K.), Montreal arts et interculturels (CA), Birmingham Hippodrome (U.K.), Edison/Betty Nansen Teatret (DK), Pia Bouman at Soctiabank Theatre (CA), University Settlement (USA), Schauspielhaus (AT), Insitute of Contemporary Art (U.K.), Kampnagel (DE), Tate Britain (U.K.), MDT (SE), Beursschouwburg (BE), Inkonst (SK), Project Art Centre (IE), Bora Bora (DK), Abrons Arts Center (USA), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (USA), and in festivals such as ImpulsTanz (AT), Birmingham International Dance Festival (U.K.), Glasgow International Dance Festival (U.K.), American Realness (USA), Les Urbaines (CH), Skopje Pride (MK), Mayfest (U.K.) Audra Festival (LT), Side Step Festival (FI), Edinburgh Fringe (U.K.), NottDance (U.K.), Roskilde (DK), amongst many others.
In the 16th edition of Festival Transamerique, he premiered High Bed Lower Castle (2022), a work co-created with Montreal-based choreographer Ellen Furey to critical acclaim with critics deeming it ‘bold, rich, dreamlike’ (Artichaut) and ‘remarkable, mesmerising’ (Westmount). And in 2023, he premiered his large-scale production of DARK, HAPPY, to the CORE at Roskilde Festival to widespread critical acclaim, with critics calling the work, ‘jaw-dropping’ (******* in Scenenblog), ‘entertaining, good style, sexiness’ (***** in Politken), ‘quivering, smouldering, postapocalyptic’ (Seismograf), ‘exciting, challenging, intense’ (TBA.no), ‘grabbed my by the collar and reminded me of the radicality and wildness of Roskilde’ (Information.dk) In 2025, he joins Norrdans (SE) as lead choreographer, on which is new work AIR BODY SAD will premiere in October 2025. His next British-made stage work co-comissioned by the The Place, Dansehallerne, Tanzhaus NRW, and MAYk will premiere in London in Spring 2026.
As a movement director, he has worked widely across the British theatre sector, including on the productions of Henry V (Shakespeare’s Globe/Headlong), Bootycandy (Gate), Closer (Lyric Hammersmith), The Glow (Royal Court), Scandaltown (Lyric Hammersmith), Two-Character Play (Hampstead Theatre), Fairview (Young Vic), and Effigies of Wickedness (Gate/English National Opera), A View from the Bridge (Headlong/Chichester Festival Theatre/Bolton Octagon), Mates in Chelsea (Royal Court), and Ada (National Youth Theatre). He has also directed fashion campaigns for top-tier brands, like Converse, and Doc Martens, and has choreographed music videos LYZZA, BOX, chi, Deto Black, p-rallel, Bianca Scout, Chinchilla, and Shy Smith. He has consulted countless artists in movement dramaturgy and choreographic practice around the globe.
In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance from Attitude Magazine, and in 2022 he was featured on the prestigious Forbes 30 under 30 list for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. In 2023, he was nominated for the Premio Cunha e Silva Prize at Galeria Municipal do Porto (PT)
He is currently an Associate Artist at The Place, and a former studio resident of Somerset House Studios. He has held artistic residencies at Sadlers Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Fabric, Duckie, and Tate Modern. He is currently a guest teacher in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of the Arts in Sweden. He lives in London, U.K.
Credits
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: THE DELUSION is curated and led by Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator, with Ruth Waters, Arts Technologies Producer, and Vi Trinh, Assistant Arts Technologies Curator, with additional support from Liz Stumpf, Assistant Exhibitions Curator.
Research and development by Serpentine Arts Technologies (led by Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies) and the Future Art Ecosystems initiative (led by Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead and Tommie Introna, R&D Producer).
Serpentine Arts Technologies programme explores the impact of technology through art, research and experimental projects. It supports artists to produce projects that use advanced technologies and convenes people working in art, technology, law, policy, and academia to share knowledge and develop new ideas about technology and society.
The foundation of Serpentine Arts Technologies’ programme is in an evolving R&D Platform that nurtures innovation for future art ecologies by securing a crucial institutional space for pragmatic interventions and necessary risk-taking at the intersection of art, science and technology. This is achieved through dedicated research projects, knowledge-sharing with the wider sector through Future Art Ecosystems, and co-facilitation of a national Creative R&D Working Group.
Conceptualised, animated, developed and directed by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley.
Technical Direction, Game & Controller Design by Vincent Moulinet
Game Development & Engine Integration by Leo Auersperg-Castell
Game Development & Network Programming by Florian Brückner
Game Mechanics Consultancy by Leo Auersperg, Florian Brückner, Vincent Moulinet
Writers Room led by Travis Alabanza, with Tatenda Shamiso and Shaznay Martin
Game Narrative Design by Brooke Maggs
Controller Engineering by Ivaylo Getov
Controller Fabrication by The White Wall Company
Game Music Composition by Loraine James
Cutscene Music Composition by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Sound Design by Guillaume Tiger
Sound Assistance by Lea Van Hall
Animation Assistant Harriet Blend
Voice Actors Madison Moore, Robin Rutenberg and Catharine Cary
Assistant Directors: Valerie-Malin Schmid and Hildegard Alina Oehler
Movement Direction by Malik Nashad Sharpe
In-Game Costume Design by Shayne Oliver Group: Anonymous Club
Featuring/Archived: Bolanle Tajudeen, Harold Offeh, Ain Bailey, Rabz Lansiquot, Helen Starr
Photography by Stefano Venturi
Focus Group Casting by Orlando Robinson
Focus Group Consultant Therapist: Melanie Brown
Focus Group Participants:
Kiera Coward-Deyell (Mellowdramatics), Faissal El-Malak, Chloe Filani, Jerry Flynn, Fossilfreedom, Adam Huizomitl, Rosie Latchford, Kumbirai Makumbe, Asha Mitra, Naomi Notice, Nadine Nour el Din, Sola Olulode, Spiros Philippas, Joel Simpson, Sarah Sheehan, Gabriella Spencer-Hope, Bolanle Tajudeen, Starr Thomas, and Rosa-Johan Uddoh
Research and Advisory Support from Julia Ebner, Meghna Jayanth, Christopher Summerfield, Dr Stephen Reicher, Celia Hodent and Alan Resnick.
Katie Baynes, Alex Boyes, Melanie Brown, V Buckenham, Cami, Kieran Clarke, Jonathan Coryn, Mélanie Courtinat, John Cruwys, Joel Dent, Geeana De Silva, Jemma Egan, Faissal El-Malak, Lou Fauroux, Cloe Ferguson, Joshua Ferguson, Andrea Gillespie, Declan Gilsenan, Lisa Gray, Sarah Hamed, Alex Harrison, Lea Hérbeth, Nicole Kaiser, Mara Karagianna, Jamie Kodera, Bettina Korek, Rosie Latchford, Kieran Long, Tadeo Lopez-Sendon, Hannah Lord, Annette Mees, Asha Mitra, Yannis Mohand Briki, Nick Murray, Naomi Notice, Nadine Nour el Din, Sola Olulode, Ilena Pegan, Spiros Philippas, Xavier Pillai, Josie Proud, Jamie Reid, Rebecca Ribichini, Derek Richards, Joana Schliemann, Suneil Setiya, Xin Song, Winnie Soon, Florie Souday, Rhiannon Stanford, Yaku Stapleton, Helen Starr, Mia Stern, Symoné, Tabitha Thorlu-Bangura, Alex Thorp, Gucci Warlock, Ella Wilks-Harper, and Jamie Young
Exhibition Production by Honor Bailey-Rosse, with Richard Install, Head of Production and Alice Houghton, Registrar.
Exhibition Design by Lydia Chan represented by New School Represents
Lighting Design by Rob Prouse
Lighting Installation by Steve Wald
Photography by Hugo Glendinning
AV provided by ADi
Exhibition Build by Beyond Surface
Technicians: Charlotte Buckler, Isabel Pina Ferreira, Giacomo Layet, Rolo, Anthony Sylvester and Kenji Takahashi
THE SAFE ROOM library is curated in collaboration with Reference Point.
Exhibition Interpretation designed by Kees de Klein.
Exhibition Publication designed by Jamie Reid Studio and published by Serpentine and Archive Books. Edited by Tamar Clarke-Brown and Cairo Clarke.
Project documentary directed by Yasser Abubeker and produced by Partizan.
Public Gallery, Princess Chance, Goethe-Institut London, Calum Knight, Kunstraum, Southby Productions, Lugh O’Neill, Clément Thibault, Igal Nassima.
