ArkDes
Exhibitions / Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities

Worldglimpsing

Illustration: 'Worldglimpsing', Jonathan Castro Alejos. 2025.
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Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities

Contemporary Design

How many worlds are you living in right now? Is it just one, or several? Online, in game simulations, at work, and at home, we create and perform different versions of ourselves every day.

Through a series of experimental works, Worldglimpsing foregrounds roleplay and worlding as civic and political acts through which we can all imagine, speculate, and embody different futures. The works and experiences in this exhibition do not offer solutions to existential problems; they are windows into other ways of moving through the complexities of our moment – and of ourselves.

Glimpse alternate ways of being, interacting, and imagining. Some experiences unfold through screens and sound, inviting you into worlds and roles shaped by others. Others are presented as game simulations, placing you in a world and asking you to take on a role. At the heart of these experiences is design: both a way of shaping worlds and of reframing the one we know, including its societies, cultural behaviours, and identities. Here, you are not just a spectator. You can be a (role)player, influencing and shaping the world(s) you inhabit. Your imagination, your choices, and your participation frame the experiences.

ArkDes and Nieuwe Instituut invite you to explore the line between reality and fantasy in Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, where visitors are part of the action.

Photo: Reinis Hofmanis. 2011. 'Britta Hoyer as Youa the Manwolf' from the 'LARP' series. A unique photographic series documenting the blurry contours of ‘real life’ and roleplay.

At the heart of the exhibition: OUR BR00D

OUR BR00D is a unique opportunity to explore alternate versions of yourself as part of one of the most extensive roleplays commissioned by a museum. Become a part of the exhibition by playing this full-scale Real Game Play (RGP) – an interactive experience designed by OMSK Social Club1, created for Worldglimpsing.

This is an experimental work that positions roleplay as an expanded form of participatory design. It is a shared space in which you can join others to test how we might live together, raise intelligence (both human and artificial), and negotiate responsibility when faced with ecological and technological transformations. The roleplay offers you the possibility to rehearse your choices and positions in an alternate version of the world we know.

OUR BR00D is a facilitated roleplay, which means the complete work can only be experienced with a guide. You can, however, glimpse part of the work at any time by experiencing the audiovisual ‘onboarding journey’ of the roleplay. On select weekends, you can sign up to play the three hour-long high intensity experience2, facilitated by members of OMSK Social Club. On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, you can participate in a shorter, low intensity experience of the game, facilitated by dedicated roleplay hosts.

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    OMSK Social Club ↗ is a stewarded practice of collective storytelling. It involves a specific immersive improvised methodology, which they coined in 2017 as ‘Real Game Play’, encompassing collective immersion and speculative worlding. From these live iterations, they harvest media relics such as films, scripts, and large-scale video installations invoking states and gateways that could potentially be fiction or an as-of-yet unlived reality. The living installations that they create examine virtual egos, popular experiences, and cautionary tales.

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    Learn more about the fully facilitated experience of OUR BR00D

Assistant to OSC: Mina Kalvøy
Spatialisation at ArkDes: Daryan Knoblauch
Voice Actor: Angela Rafferty
Embroidery Production: Angela Rafferty
Furniture/Object Production: Natália Sýkorová
Frame Production: Nevo Bar
AI Agents Development, Voice Cloning: SEMILLA STUDIO (Moisés Horta)
Photography: Jonas Schoeneberg
Audio Recording-Editing and Post Production: Alfie Brooks
Music Composition: Yikii
AI Consultation: Cem Dagdelen, Joey Holder, Will Allstetter

Participatory research and development shaped through the Brood Reading Group (Callie’s, Berlin, 2024–2025) and playtesting sessions held at Shedhalle, Zürich; Sybil, Berlin; and Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam.

OUR BR00D by OMSK Social Club is a RGP (‘Real Game Play’) experience commissioned by ArkDes and Nieuwe Instituut with developmental support from Shedhalle ↗ (Zürich), Callie’s ↗ (Berlin), and Haus der Kunst (Munich) as part of the Art & AI programme of the Kulturstiftung des Bundes. Following Stockholm, it will journey to Rotterdam in 2026.

Public program

View of Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025. CC BY.
Reinis Hofmanis, detail of LARP series, 2011-2024. Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025.
View of Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025. CC BY.
View of Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025.
Lu Yang, detail of DOKU – The Self, 2022. Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025.
Detail of Simon Denny, Dungeon artifact 2: Heroquest rack, 2024. Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025.
View of Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, 2025. Courtesy of ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut. Photo: Marco Cappelletti / Marco Cappelletti Studio. 2025. CC BY.

Participants

Ayoung Kim
Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley
Ed Fornieles, Nina Runa Essendrop
Lu Yang
Natalie Paneng
OMSK Social Club
Reinis Hofmanis
Simon Denny
Tom K Kemp
Trojan Horse
¥€$Si PERSE / Neurodungeon

Advisor: Johanna Koljonen
Exhibition Architect: Daryan Knoblauch
2D Design, Galleries: A.M. Stockholm
2D Design, Visuals: Jonathan Castro Alejos

ArkDes × Nieuwe Instituut

Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities is a collaboration between two national museums with a shared focus on investigating an expanded field of design. The first chapter of the exhibition, hosted by ArkDes in Stockholm, will open on October 3, 2025. The second chapter, hosted by the Nieuwe Instituut ↗ in Rotterdam, will open in Autumn 2026.

Logos of ArkDes and Nieuwe Instituut

Nieuwe Instituut ↗ is the Netherlands national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture, located in Rotterdam’s Museumpark. Through exhibitions, events, research and other national and international initiatives, they show how design ideas contribute positively to urgent societal and ecological challenges. Nieuwe Instituut is a place where designers, thinkers and the public meet. They manage the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning and the Sonneveld House Museum, an icon of Dutch functionalist architecture dating from 1933.

Nick Ash Simon Denny, detail of 'Dungeon map 8: Dungeons & Dragons gaming advertisements 1980s – 2010s', 2024. Courtesy the artist and Petzel Gallery, New York.