Third World: The Bottom Dimension is an experimental exhibition, video game and web3 tokens led by artist Gabriel Massan (b.1996, Nilópolis, Brazil) with Serpentine Arts Technologies. The project convenes and platforms a vital generation of interdisciplinary, queer, Afro-diasporic Brazilian artists.
Massan combines storytelling and world-building techniques to create virtual ecosystems and digital sculptures that simulate and narrate stories from Black Brazilian experience. Driven by a desire to “reveal rather than replicate systems of inequality” while instigating change, their work investigates how the so-called “Third World”—an offensive and imposed classification for non-industrialized, developing nations—is imagined by the West.
Third World: The Bottom Dimension arose from the artist’s own concerns regarding the fragility of the future. It has been in development since 2021, amidst a period that saw a huge political shift in Brazil, with the fall of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro regime, and the re-election of center-leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Across its various parts, the project gathers responses to what Massan calls our contemporary “state of emergence” and uses digital technologies to nurture and distribute a constellation of perspectives and foster change.
Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine, photo: Hugo Glendinning, 2023
Third World: The Bottom Dimension © Serpentine, photo: Hugo Glendinning, 2023
Bio
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Photo: Reece OwenGabriel Massan
BR
Gabriel Massan is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, they create worlds that simulate and narrate epistemic states of inequality. Through “fictional archaeology,” the artist investigates possibilities for subversive otherness. In 2024, Massan opens a solo show at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, participates in the 38th Panorama of Brazilian Art: 1000º at São Paulo’s MAM, and has been selected and awarded for a commission by the FCAC in Geneva.
Credits
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, Ralph McCoy
Capture Mode Development, Unreal Consultant: Iraj Montasham
Animation, Cinematography, Film VFX: Carlos Minozzi
Additional Cinematography: Alexandre Pina
Graphic, UI Design: Masako Hirano
Writing, 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
Commissioned and Produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies.
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Game commissioned in association with the Julia Stoschek Collection.