Third World: The Bottom Dimension is a journey into a fantastical and thought-provoking world, built by a vital generation of Brazilian artists. It is part of an ongoing and multi-dimensional project of the same name by Gabriel Massan and collaborators, which includes web3 tokens built on Tezos and a video game that explores Black Brazilian experience as it intersects with the impacts of colonialism.
“I want to create the experience of walking through possibilities and memories of life and narrative… A work that people can walk inside.”
– Gabriel Massan
Designed as a responsive ecosystem, this interdisciplinary exhibition extends the ideas behind the video game, offering all visitors an opportunity to play it and step inside the world of its concepts, emotions and mechanics, while seated in Massan’s sculptural playstations. The exhibition is also a space to encounter the broader practices of a network of artists and thinkers – including Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, LYZZA, Jota Mombaça and Ventura Profana – with contributed works combining installation, textile, sound and poetry. These expand our capacity to imagine otherwise, embracing ancestral knowledge, ecological awareness, and an openness to transmutation and reverberation.
Inviting visitors to navigate through the lenses of decoloniality, queerness and decentralisation – technological, social, economic, and ideological – Third World is an experience that challenges us to rethink the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world. As Massan says, “I want to create the experience of walking through possibilities and memories of life and narrative.”
Taking cues from work developed for the game, Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro exercises a space of freedom with an earth installation. Novíssimo Edgar explores the construction of social fabric through character play, textile work and ceramics that reflects their in-game level design. LYZZA creates an immersive surround sound environment influenced by real-time gameplay that invites us to consider symbiosis and adaptive behaviour. Jota Mombaça‘s text-based wall intervention announces an architectural breach within the gallery space and offers an eye to possibility. Ventura Profana brings a digital collage and sculptural installation that lays the foundations for new infrastructures.
web3 Tokens
The project Third World: The Bottom Dimension emerges from Massan’s interest in technological, social and economic decentralisation, and includes participatory digital tokens built on the Tezos blockchain. Players can record ‘memories’ of their own actions as they play the game, and by minting this record (or snapshot) on the blockchain, build a public archive of multiple perspectives and actions. In addition, a collection of limited editions will bring together Massan, their collaborators and a wider community of web3 artists.
About & Credits
Third World: The Bottom Dimension exhibition is curated by:
Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Commissions Curator
Kay Watson, Head of Arts Technologies
Sarah Hamed, Assistant Exhibitions Curator
Video Game production led by Róisín McVeigh, Associate Producer, Arts Technologies
With Serpentine Arts Technologies:
Alex Boyes, Arts Technologies Producer
Victoria Ivanova, R&D Strategic Lead
Eva Jäger, Arts Technologies Curator
Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director
Produced by
Production Manager: Halime Özdemir
Assistant Production Manager: Zsuzsa Benke
Technical Director: Ivaylo Getov with on-site support from Gabriel Stones
Set Design and Tech Biota: Furmaan Ahmed
Set Design Assistants: Max Critchlow, Flint James Mcdonald, Ricardo Monteiro, Marta Stok, Hara Spyrou, Inga Tilda, and Sophie-Mai
Technicians: Michael Ditchburn, Luca George, Eóin Keeley, Giacomo Layet, Anthony Silvester and Andy Wyatt
Audiovisual Installation: Adam Barkley, Joshua Cumming-Webb, Ant Marlow, Jamie Maule, Dean Proctor, Charles Stanton-Jones and Sara Smith (ADi)
Lighting, Rigging and Set Build: Svend Johanssen and Rob (Pacey) Prestage (DCLX)
Fabrication and Steelworks: Langa Langa, Isaac Leung, Robert McCloed and Julian Tapales
Sculpture Fabrication: Jamie Bracken-Lobb, and Gabriel Stones
Design Work: We Cut Stuff
Upholstery: Camilla Jayne Bradley Upholstery & Design
Web3 token development: Pascal Brun and Lionel Perrin at Papers AG
With additional support from the Serpentine Legal Lab led by Alana Kushnir
Special thanks to
Agazero, Giulia Bravo, Arthur Breitman, Kathleen Breitman, Mason Edwards, Sarah Friend, Whitney Hart, Meghna Jayanth, Rodrigo Jesus, Ellie Fox Johnson, Ta’wa Melchior, Fabien Siouffi, Veronica So, Bettina Korek, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Chris Spear, Tom Wandrag, Producer 360˚, Abiding Bridge, A Gentil Carioca, HOA Galeria, Valérie Whitacre, Ben Vickers, Mendes Wood, and all associated parties who have made this project possible.
Game Credits
Third World: The Bottom Dimension
Lead Artist, Creative Director, 3D Sculptor, Concept: Gabriel Massan
Featured Artists: Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, LYZZA
Sound Design: LYZZA
Unreal Development: Alexandre Pina, Marchino Manga and Ralph McCoy
Capture Mode Development and Unreal Consultant: Iraj Montasham
Animation, Cinematography and Film VFX: Carlos Minozzi
Additional Cinematography: Alexandre Pina
Graphic and UI Design: Masako Hirano
Writing and Narrative Design Support: Sweet Baby Inc
Translator: Adriana Francisco
Translation Support: Manuela Cochat
Mastering Engineer: Rainy Miller
QA Testing: Keiran Cooper
Curator: Tamar Clarke-Brown
Producer: Róisín McVeigh
Game Commissioned in Association with Julia Stoschek
Third World: The Bottom Dimension uses Unreal® Engine. Unreal® is a trademark or registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere. Unreal® Engine, Copyright 1998 – 2023, Epic Games, Inc.
Playtesters
Leonardo Almeida, Alex Baldwin, Guilherme Baumworcel, Alexa Chow, Rebecca Edwards, Alba Daza, Joshua Ferguson, Cloë Ferguson, Marie Foulston, Ralph Louis Gaudio, Ivaylo Getov, Hanna Girma, Max Glazer-Munck, Sarah Hamed, Libby Heaney, Funmi Lijadu, Flora Kessler, Chris Kindred, Samantha King, Jamie Kodera, Bettina Korek, Jakob Kudsk Steensen, Tanya Pragnell, Ralph Pritchard, Karina Lopez, Youssra Manlaykhaf, Sammy Ofer, Halime Özdemir, Alex Rowse, Nico Smirnoff, Barney Steel, Kostas Stasinopoulos, Octavia Stead, Leah Yeoh, Tom Wandrag, Sophia Wee.
Biographies
Gabriel Massan (b.1996 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Framed through a conceptual practice they call ‘fictional archaeology’, and working across 3D animation, digital sculpture, games, sound, and interactive installations, the artist challenges warped conceptions of the so-called ‘Third World’ while investigating possibilities for subversive otherness. Selected residencies and awards include the Arts Explora Program supported by Cité Internationale Des Arts (2023), Dazed 100 (2022), Circa x Dazed (2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (2020) and ETOPIA – Center for Art & Technology (2019). They have created significant commissions with Serpentine Arts Technologies (2022-3), Bangkok Biennale (2022), The Photographers’ Gallery (2022), and X Museum (2022). Massan has presented talks and conversations at institutions including La Biennale di Venezia, Art Basel Miami, DLD Conference, University College London, Royal College Of Arts and Institut Français. Recent exhibitions include: ‘WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age” (Julia Stoschek Collection, 2022; Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2023); ‘Canon!’ (Frieze No.9 Cork Street, 2022) and ‘Possible Agreements’ (Mendes Wood DM, 2022). In June 2023, they launched the critically acclaimed multipart project ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ at Serpentine, London, which includes a collaborative video game, multidisciplinary exhibition and web3 tokens.
Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro (b. 1996, Vitória, Espírito Santo, Brazil) is an AfroBantu visual artist, writer and psychologist who has a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology, and who belongs to an AfroBantu family lineage. Her works include photography, video, dance, painting, and installation (temples). With her artistic and academic practice, Brasileiro is interested in studying the principle of transmutation as an unavoidable destiny. For this, she dribbles, incorporates, and immerses herself in the Bantu ontology, embracing healing (cura) as a perishable moment of freedom. Currently, Brasileiro studies and builds interspecific spirituality and ancestry.
Novíssimo Edgar (b. 1993, Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil) is a ‘multi-artist’: a rapper, poet and creator of upcycled masks and costumes. Edgar appeared in the Brazilian urban scene in 2018 with his debut album Ultrassom. As a compulsive creator, he has made books, drawings, performances, installations, games, and NFTs, producing work that speaks to freedom, and as a speculative exercise committed to an urgent futurism which passes through various supports and segments of metalanguage and transmedia research.
LYZZA (b. 1999, Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a producer and vocalist who has always mocked boundaries. Carving out a space for herself within electronic music since her 2017 EP Powerplay, LYZZA has since traversed the sonic world showing her artistic potency. Her multiple collaborations range from working with Showstudio and Mugler to producing for billboard-nominated songstress Emel Mathlouthi. In recent years, LYZZA has been widely hailed as one of electronic music’s most promising young avant-pop producers.
Jota Mombaça (b. 1991, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work unfolds in a variety of mediums. The sonic and visual matter of words plays an important role in her practice, which often relates to anti-colonial critique and gender disobedience. Her work has been presented in several institutional frameworks, such as the 32nd and 34th São Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2020/2021), the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020), the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), and the 46th Salon Nacional de Artistas in Colombia (2019). Currently, she has been interested in researching elemental forms of sensing, anti-colonial imagination, and the relation between opacity and self-preservation in the experience of racialized trans artists in the Global Art World.
Daughter of the mysterious bowels of mother Bahia, Ventura Profana (b. 1993, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil) prophesies multiplication and abundance in black, indigenous and travesti life. Doctrinated in Baptist temples, she is a missionary pastor, singer, writer, composer and visual artist, whose practice is rooted in researching the implications and methodologies of evangelization in Brazil and beyond, through the spread of neo-Pentecostal churches. Praises, like the sting of a dagger licked with wax and rust in Pharisees’ hearts.
EVENTS/LIVE
The exhibition and programme explore the concept of ‘game-as-platform’ and the role of a public arts institution in nurturing a constellation of diverse perspectives. As collaborative co-creation is at the heart of the Third World: The Bottom Dimension project, Serpentine North will also serve as a platform for a programme of interventions from a broader network of artists and thinkers. The events programme will include Twitch sessions, talks, performances and Park Nights in the acclaimed Serpentine Pavilion designed by Lina Ghotmeh.
Mint Your Memory
The exhibition is an evolving project that presents new and experimental approaches for our visitors to experience web3 by minting memories of their gameplay on the Tezos blockchain.
How to mint a token at the exhibition: When you play the game you can use the in-game camera function (known as ‘Capture Power’) to take pictures or record short videos of gameplay. Once you finish playing you will be able to mint one of these pictures or short videos as a token, also known as an Non Fungible Token or NFT, on the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain. If you would like to mint a token of your game play during your visit, we advise you to open a Kukai wallet in advance here.
”The exhibition makes spaces available for communities to be started. Players can record memories of their own actions as they play the game and by minting this record or snapshot with Tezos, build a public archive of multiple perspectives and actions.” Gabriel Massan
View public archive of minted tokens here The Bottom Dimension Agents Report | Collection (objkt.com)
Find out more about our wider work with Blockchain: The web3 element of Third World: The Bottom Dimension was developed with the artist following a period of R&D with consultants from Tezos and the wider Blockchain community, and Serpentine Arts Technologies Legal Lab.
Blockchain Lab – Serpentine Galleries
Future Art Ecosystems – FAE3: Art x Decentralised Technologies
To keep updated about future web3 developments with Third World: The Bottom Dimension keep checking this page and watch out for announcements in the Arts Technologies newsletter – Sign up here
More on web3
In this video, hear Serpentine Arts Technologies and members of the Tezos ecosystem answer your questions about web3. They also introduce our upcoming project, Third World: The Bottom Dimension, with web3 elements powered by Tezos.
View public archive of minted tokens here
