Alice Bucknell: Persistent Worlds

Persistent Worlds
Alice Bucknell

10/10 2025—19/1 2026
Gallery 3

Curator: Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás

Kunsthalle Praha opens Persistent Worlds, the first comprehensive solo exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist and writer Alice Bucknell. Recognised as one of the leading voices of a new generation of artists working with video games, Bucknell recently made history when a video game they created was acquired by a major museum — a landmark moment for the medium’s recognition within an institutional context. Their practice uses the language of gaming and digital simulation to explore how humans, non-humans, and machines coexist. The exhibition invites visitors to step directly into these imagined worlds via large-scale video installations and newly developed cooperative games based on active participation and shared experience.

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The title Persistent Worlds comes from the realm of multiplayer video games, where virtual environments continue to evolve even when no one is playing. “Through Bucknell’s four most recent projects, the show suggests that digital worldbuilding does more than mirror reality: it unravels and unsettles it, opening space for speculation and for scenarios that might shape our shared future. Worldbuilding, then, is not merely a tool of fiction-making but a political gesture — an act of imagining worlds oriented toward societal change,“ describes exhibition curator Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás, who is an art historian, author, research associate at ECAL Lausanne, and lecturer at University College London.

The exhibition features four major works, created in the past two years. Staring at the Sun (2024–2025) is a “sci-fi documentary” that explores the dark side of solar geoengineering research, reflecting on humanity’s search for technological solutions to the climate crisis. The film is narrated by multiple protagonists — including remote sensing scientists from NASA, geoengineering startup CEOs, dilettante documentarians, and a supercomputer called Derecho — all of whom are based on real-world interviews conducted by the artist. It explores how novel technologies continue to shape and redefine our relationship to the world we call home. Another piece, The Alluvials (2023) is a seven-chapter video work that explores the politics of drought and water scarcity in a near-future version of Los Angeles. This artwork was recently acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, becoming the first video game included in the museum’s permanent collection. Two new cooperative games, Small Void (2025) and Nightcrawlers (2025), invite visitors to play together as nocturnal pollinators or to explore the limits of language, attachment theory and cosmic annihilation. “Video games are rapidly becoming one of the most powerful storytelling mediums of our time. Capable of toggling across scales, perspectives, and possible futures, games enable us to grapple with complex systems head-on, to learn through play and to participate in the co-creation of new worlds,” elaborates Alice Bucknell.

Rooted in speculative fiction and digital worldbuilding, Bucknell’s work connects art and science. “Persistent Worlds reflects Kunsthalle Praha’s interest in artists who combine rigorous research on pressing issues with visionary aesthetics. In the current context of eco-anxiety and political turmoil, Alice Bucknell’s work encourages us to rethink our conception of the world and the ways we inhabit it, while nurturing hope,” adds Christelle Havranek, Chief Curator at Kunsthalle Praha.

Presented in Gallery 3, the exhibition continues Kunsthalle Praha’s acclaimed series of autumn exhibitions dedicated to audiovisual installations and environments. The space offers exceptional technical facilities that allow artists to experiment with immersive formats. The exhibition architecture of Persistent Worlds, designed by Czech art studio Studio Richard Loskot, creates a futuristic spatial structure that envelops visitors in a multi-layered environment of light, sound, and moving image, which enhances the viewer’s sense of entering another world. At a time defined by technological acceleration, Bucknell’s work invites audiences to reflect on coexistence across species, systems, and scales.

You can also explore the curatorial text by Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás.

Persistent Worlds: Curatorial Text

ARTIST BIO

Alice Bucknell (they/them) is a North American artist, writer, and educator. Their work explores the affective dimensions of video games as interfaces for understanding complex systems, relationships, and forms of knowledge. Bucknell’s work has been exhibited widely, including recent and upcoming exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Copenhagen Contemporary, MUNCH Triennale in Oslo,  HEK in Basel, EPFL Pavilions and mudac in Lausanne, and their first solo museum exhibition  at Kunsthalle Praha. Previous exhibitions and collaborations include presentations at Serpentine in London, the Venice Biennale, Medialab Matadero in Madrid, Frieze & Getty PST ART, and the LA Public Library.

In 2025, their video game The Alluvials was acquired by the SFMOMA in San Francisco, making it the first video game included in the museum’s permanent collection. In 2026, Bucknell will present new commissions at Biennale Gherdëina 10 in Val Gardena (Italy) and Counterpublic, a triennial in St. Louis (USA), and will also take part in the La Becque Principal Residency Program. They are currently a faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, where they teach courses on worlding, video games, and philosophies of technology.