VIENNA.- Ctrl + Shift + Del is a command to delete. But what if it became a command to reset?
The exhibition explores this question through speculative video games that reclaim digital spaces as sites of care, memory, and resistance. Three artistic positions offer distinct responses to overlapping crises—occupation, imperialist violence, capitalism, overtourism, climate collapse—not by escaping them, but by reprogramming their structures.
What connects the works is an understanding of land not only as soil or territory, but as a collective experience of place. From this starting point, the artists use video games to connect the individual and the societal through sanctuaries, simulations, and archives. Sanctuaries emerge as virtual spaces where queer BIPOC communities share pain, joy, and grief. Simulations advocate for the sonic self-determination of occupied communities. Archives preserve ancestral practices of land care and rural knowledge—traditions threatened by standardization, overtourism, and extraction. Across each mode, the objective is twofold: to contest and to preserve.
Gameplay is built around acts of tenderness and testimony. Wandering and encountering become archaeological methods: players experience fragments of erased neighborhoods, suppressed soundscapes, and damaged ecosystems. To be with, to listen, to nurture—these are acts of resistance and resilience that open space for healing. In these worlds, listening replaces conquering, and nurturing replaces accumulating. The game mechanics resist dominant logics of competition and control, proposing instead reciprocity, kinship, and collective memory.
These worlds intertwine memory, imagination, and resilience, transforming gameplay into a poetic act of survival and care. Rather than escaping contemporary crises, Ctrl + Shift + Del confronts them by attempting to reprogram their underlying structures. To press these keys is not to delete, but to reset: inherited systems of violence, extraction, and erasure. In doing so, the exhibition reveals artistic video games as cultural tools for preserving endangered lifeworlds, amplifying marginalized voices, and prototyping more just and caring futures. They become speculative laboratories where society can be reimagined.
Samuel Baidoo is a multidisciplinary artist working across performance, choreography, and visual arts. Based between Antwerp and Brussels, they graduated from Saint-Lucas (2015) and the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp (2018). As a performer, they have collaborated with Koen de Preter, Maud Le Pladec, Michiel Vandevelde, and others. As a mentor, they have coached emerging choreographers at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp and beyond. They are a member of the Hanafubuki collective, and their individual work includes wijtwee//nosotros, grot-nest-tempel-huis, and Huis voor Tranen. Currently, they are developing Plum Road Tea Dream, a multiformat project exploring the video game as a sanctuary from a queer and BIPOC perspective.
Kyriaki Goni (Athens, Greece) is an artist working across CGI video, textiles, drawing, sound, and sculpture to create immersive environments. Her solo exhibitions include The Breeder Gallery (Athens), SixtyEight Art Institute (Copenhagen), KVOST (Berlin), and the Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens). Her work has been featured in group exhibitions such as the 13th Shanghai Biennale, Ars Electronica, Transmediale, the 8th Gherdeina Biennale, and the 2nd Warsaw Biennale. She holds a BA in Visual Arts and an MA in Digital Arts from the Athens School of Fine Arts, as well as degrees in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Athens and Leiden University.
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and researcher, and the founder of Earshot, the world's first non-profit organisation using sound in the defense of human and environmental rights. Through original investigations, Earshot transforms sound into a tool of justice—treating it as both an acoustic trace of violence and a means of control. Their work has provided audio evidence for over 30 major media outlets, including Al Jazeera, the BBC, and the Washington Post, and has supported advocacy campaigns by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others. Earshot's investigations expose abuse, shift public perception, and amplify voices too often unheard.
DigitEyes is a digital portal for immersive exhibitions, offering a curated selection of socially, politically, and ecologically relevant works that contribute to the contemporary discourse in Vienna's art and cultural landscape. These are not digital reproductions, but newly created spaces filled with artifacts and stories that unfold beyond real-world limitations. DigitEyes thus expands the classic museum experience and provides a platform for reflective and forward-oriented art mediation.
Joanna Zabielska works at the intersection of digital art, design, and architecture. After studying spatial planning at the Vienna University of Technology as well as Social Design and Digital Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, she deepened her digital skills at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She is co-owner of Granda Banda OG, a studio for multimedia design, and developed Digit.Eyes, a platform for presenting digital exhibitions, funded by the Vienna Business Agency and MA7. She currently teaches the artistic project "Beta.City" at the Department of Visual Culture at the Vienna University of Technology.
