Hans Ulrich Obrist on How Video Games Can Level-Up the Art World

Artwrld editor-at-large Andrew Goldstein will be hosting a live conversation with Serpentine Galleries Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist via Zoom this Thursday, January 9th, at 12:00 PM EST.

RSVP to attend the discussion. If you have questions for Hans Ulrich that are relevant to the topic of the show, please email them to andrew@artwrld.com.

What if the next time you went to a museum you didn’t just look at the art on the wall—what if you activated a controller and played it?

To a certain degree, this is already happening. Video game-based art has been displayed in major shows, from the Venice to the Whitney biennial; MoMA has historical video games from Pong to Minecraft in its permanent collection; and the pioneering video game artist Auriea Harvey, who I spoke to last year on Artwrld, recently had a survey at the Museum of the Moving Image that had almost as many controllers as wall labels.

But Hans Ulrich Obrist, the eminent curator and artistic director of London's Serpentine Galleries, has a vision for the future of art where video games play a far more prominent role—and where, in fact, they are primed to have a transformative impact on the broader art ecosystem.

This week, to kick off the second season of our Artwrld conversations, I am very pleased to talk to Hans Ulrich about why he declared 2025 to be the “Year of Video Games” at the Serpentine, how his institution has been pioneering the fusion of art and technology for over a decade, and what the future of the museum experience might look like.

Missed our Artwrld conversation with artist, writer, and NFT advocate Kenny Schachter? Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

About Artwrld

Artwrld hosts live talks every week with leading artists, technologists, art professionals, and entrepreneurs about the opportunities and challenges at the vanguard of creativity.

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