Nieuwe Instituut presents ‘Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities’Nieuwe Instituut presents ‘Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities’

• On Saturday 12 December 2026, the Nieuwe Instituut will open the exhibition Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities, in collaboration with ArkDes in Stockholm, and curated by James Taylor-Foster.

• The exhibition showcases newly commissioned and existing works by OMSK Social Club, Ayoung Kim, Lu Yang, Reinis Hofmanis, Ed Fornieles with Nina Runa Essendrop, and Cao Fei. These draw on influences from LARP, cosplay, table-top RPGs, and digital gaming, alongside science fiction and fantasy culture.

• Worldglimpsing demonstrates how roleplay and ‘worlding’ function as testing grounds for designing identity, living environments, and how we structure society. It invites visitors to become participants that can imagine and enact alternate versions of themselves.

• At the heart of the exhibition is the immersive work OUR BR00D, a ‘Real Game Play’ experience in which visitors – alongside each other and machines – are responsible for caring for an AI baby.

Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture in Rotterdam, is opening a new exhibition – Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities – on Saturday 12 December 2026. The exhibition is a collaboration ArkDes in Stockholm, and curated by James Taylor-Foster.

Through a series of experimental works, the exhibition explores the power and potential of roleplay as a contemporary design practice. Worldglimpsing seeks to reveal that roleplay and the articulation of alternate worlds can also serve as forms of political and social engagement. Visitors are invited to step into newly imagined realities and become active participants. Rather than providing ready-made answers to life’s big questions, the exhibition offers new ways of looking at the present and at ourselves.

The exhibition features newly commissioned and existing works by leading contemporary artists and designers from a variety of disciplines: a ‘Real Game Play’ by OMSK Social Club; a PC-based action adventure game by Ayoung Kim, with a spin-off of the Delivery Dancer series co-commissioned by Somerset House Studios, Canyon, and Nieuwe Instituut; films in the DOKU series by Lu Yang, photographs from a series of portraits of LARPers by Reinis Hofmanis; roleplay video work by Ed Fornieles with Nina Runa Essendrop; and a film and photographs by Cao Fei.

The exhibition incorporates elements from diverse forms of roleplay – such as live-action role-playing (LARP) and table-top roleplay games (TTRPGs) – alongside concepts and methods from various design disciplines. Some of the experimental artworks and installations unfold via screens and speakers, while others are game simulations that aim to immerse visitors in a world in which they take on a role. None of the works, installations or games adhere to the conventional distinctions between the virtual, digital, and physical realms.

We all play multiple roles. We behave differently at school or work than we do at home, and differently with friends than with family or colleagues. Design shapes these worlds by creating stories, characters, spaces, objects and shared rules. This invites people to experiment with different ways of behaving, imagining and living together, whether in the real world or the virtual world we also inhabit every day.

Roleplay and ‘worlding’ – the act of shaping alternate worlds – make this creativity visible and playable, freeing it from the conventions that govern everyday life. They serve as testing grounds for our identities, our living environments and even society as a whole. They are the outcomes of a distinctive, personal design process that provides a space in which to imagine, play with and try out different versions of ourselves and the world. Ultimately, they contribute to a better understanding of the world around us and offer a vision of how it could be improved.

Central to Worldglimpsing is the immersive Real Game Play OUR BR00D, which was developed by OMSK Social Club and commissioned by the Nieuwe Instituut and ArkDes. This live, improvised form of collaborative worlding invites visitors to enter a shared fictional world in which humans and machines collaborate to care for the AI baby Br00d. In this way, they explore how humans and artificial intelligence might learn, care for one another and make decisions together in an ever-changing world.

During opening hours every day, visitors can take a tour of OUR BR00D with Nieuwe Instituut staff. One weekend a month, OMSK Social Club facilitates a three-hour game session, allowing participants to immerse themselves in Real Game Play.

Worldglimpsing: Roleplay and the Design of Alternate Realities opens at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam on Saturday 12 December 2026. This exhibition is a collaboration with Stockholm-based ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design, where it was on display until 4 October 2026. The exhibition is made possible by the Mondriaan Fund and Fonds 21.

For more information, visit nieuweinstituut.nl/en/projects/worldglimpsing

Images
Please find a selection of accompanying images in the press kit.

Contact
Robin van Essel, Press Officer, +31 (0)6 3803 9218, r.vanessel@nieuweinstituut.nl

About ArkDes (Moderna Museet) × 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, opened on October 3, 2025. The second chapter, hosted by the Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands Museum for Architecture, Design and Digital Culture in Rotterdam, opens on 12 December 2026.

OUR BR00D by OMSK Social Club is an RGP (‘Real Game Play’) commissioned by ArkDes and Nieuwe Instituut as part of Worldglimpsing 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.