Liquid Dungeon Byproduct

A Video Game Artwork
and Installation by

Tabitha Nikolai, Esper99,
and Porpentine
Charity Heartscape

October 1–31, 2020

Welcome to the Dungeon. You have been here since the 5th grade, though in dreams you glimpsed it long before. Through your symbiosis with the dungeon we glean Liquid Dungeon Byproduct. It flows over you and through you.

Liquid Dungeon Byproduct is a job creator.

Liquid Dungeon Byproduct is your constitutionally protected right.

Liquid Dungeon Byproduct is a bespoke smoothie of cortisol, lactic acid, and diesel.

It is regrettable that a rhetorical environment has sprung up in which the dungeon is maligned as a “carceral landscape” and “sword-industrial complex.” The droplet diffusion model of an orc’s exploding chest would never have been modeled without the research opportunities provided by the dungeon. A nine-year-old, bald, diverse girl is receiving medical care because of the dungeon. Her eyes reflect the iconic armor outline of the brave, yet non-toxically masculine men, women, men-identified people, and women-identified people bravely spelunking the dungeon. A bipartisan path forward. A cure for mana rash and autism. Hands across the future. Elves and humans.

We thank you for your service. You are the dream you’re looking for.

Liquid Dungeon Byproduct is a video game artwork and installation by Tabitha Nikolai and collaborative partners Porpentine Charity Heartscape (writing) and ESPer99 (sound). In addition to the downloadable game, the gallery presents an immersive projection viewable through the windows at 916 NW Flanders Street. Visitors can experience the exhibition at anytime on Thursdays – Saturdays during the month of October.

On October 15th at 5pm PT / 8pm ET, HOLDING Contemporary will host an online conversation and Q&A with Porpentine and Tabitha Nikolai on Twitch.tv, and then, at 5:30pm, switching over to a VJ/DJ set by ESPer99 here. You can ask questions either by emailing Tabitha--tabitha(at)tabithanikolai(dot)com--in advance, or by logging into your Twitch account and asking questions through the chat. A Twitch account is not needed if you just want to want the observe.

Available by download in either DECADENT or LITE forms, for Mac or PC.

Please ensure you download the entire ZIP file and follow install directions in the readme document within.

Tabitha Nikolai is a trashgender gutter elf and low-level cybermage raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and based in Portland, Oregon. She creates the things that would have better sustained her younger self--simulations of a more livable future, and the obstacles that intervene. These look like: fictive text, videogames, cosplay, and earnest rites of suburban occult. Her work has been shown at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Vox Populi in Philadelphia, and has been covered by i-D Magazine, the New York Times, and Art in America. She hopes you're doing okay.
Tabithanikolai.com
Instagram: @tabby_twitchit 

ESPer99 is a superhomunculus and former child priest who makes audiovisual noise in Los Angeles. They have contributed music, art and/or code to many of Porpentine's works as Neotenomie. They have also excreted pop music with both members of the band Black Dresses, for others as one-third of songwriting-production team The Oracle, and have released several albums of original music. They patiently await the heat death of the universe.
esper99.org

Porpentine Charity Heartscape is a writer, game designer, and dead swamp milf in Oakland. She has exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, is a Sundance Institute and Tiptree fellow, and has been commissioned by Vice and Rhizome. She is the author of With Those We Love Alive, Psycho Nymph Exile, and Eczema Angel Orifice.
slimedaughter.com
Twitter: @slimedaughter

HOLDING Contemporary presents exhibitions and programs by visual artists across disciplines. Through our curatorial vision and alternative community-driven business model we seek to challenge the economic and social privilege of the art world.

Thanks to PICA for the loan of the projectors.
Thanks to The Ford Family Foundation for exhibition support.

Photos by Mario Gallucci