Rider Spoke (2007) will be exhibited at Barcelona’s iconic CCCB (Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona) until May 2020 as part of the new #GameplayCCCB exhibition.

Examining the origins and language of video games, the exhibit looks at the impact they have had on popular digital culture and on art and society. The exhibition also features work by artists Mary Flanagan, Joan Leandre, Harun Farocki, Lawrence Lek, LaTurbo Avedon and Mónica Rikic.

Rider Spoke (2007), which was developed from works such as Uncle Roy All Around You, continued our fascination at that time, with how games and new communication technologies, were creating hybrid social spaces in which the private and the public combine.

The work invited the audience to cycle through the streets of the city, equipped with a handheld computer, and search for a hiding place. Once there, they must record a short message and begin searching for the hiding places of others. The work posed further questions about where theatre may be sited and what form it may take. It invited the public to be co-authors of the piece and become a visible manifestation of it as they cycle through the city. It was precisely dependent on its local context and invited the audience to explore that context for its emotional and intellectual resonances. Rider Spoke was first shown at the Barbican in London in October 2007 and has since been presented in Athens, Brighton, Budapest, Sydney and Adelaide.

GameplayCCCB will run from 19 December 2019 to 3 May 2020. Find out more about Gameplay at the CCCB and read more about our 2007 work Rider Spoke.