2021–

ongoing video game series

multimedia installation

“Welcome to Nepenthe.

You came here to forget.

Don’t you remember?”

‘Nepenthe’ is an ongoing series of site-specific video games that explore themes of memory and identity in virtual worlds. Named after the fictional medicine for sorrow from Greek mythology, the installation was first realised at the 2021 Ljubljana Biennale within an ambient chill-out club environment. The meta-fictional installation creates an atmosphere of uncanny healing and escapism that suits our current age, while imagining a future of total automated entertainment. The installation includes a new soundtrack with original music – ambient, emotional, and melodic but with dark undercurrents. Evoking environmental music designed to operate almost subconsciously, the soundtrack incorporates sounds (synthesized and sampled) that signify how technology can enable future ‘cultures of wellness’ and ‘healing’ lifestyle design.

For its latest presentation at the QUAD, Derby (2022) and the Sydney Biennale (2024), Lek explores the complex symbolism of one of the most iconic landmarks in Beijing, the ruins of the Old Summer Palace.

Lawrence has created a new physical installation and game map based on the ruin of Da Shui Fa – the waterworks at Beijing’s Old Summer Palace. Widely regarded as the ‘Garden of Gardens’ and the pinnacle of classical Chinese garden palace design, the Old Summer Palace was destroyed by a combined Anglo-French expeditionary force during the Second Opium War in 1860.

Within the installation is a playable version of the game, where the ruin has been brought into a virtual museum on an island for further preservation. Built using the Unreal video game engine and featuring an electronic music score by the artist, the game is accompanied by a walkthrough short film that imagines a lone traveller stumbling across the island and encountering the ghosts of past civilisations within glowing ruins and pristine architecture.

As with his previous open-world games such as '2065' and 'Nøtel', Lek expands the virtual environment of Nepenthe with each new exhibition. The game was previously featured at the 2021 Ljubljana Biennale of Graphic Arts, the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in London, and at the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea. Architecture from these past exhibition sites also feature as ‘ruined’ environments within the game itself.

‍