A Different End to a Different Play - Sondi

Following our research into Dreamland, looking for places of rest and their meaning in our hyper-productive, attention-driven world, Sickhouse invites artist Sondi to present her research on rest as resistance. The exhibition is a physical extension from the game "Mbombo Dream Echoes".

A Different End to a Different Play is an immersive exhibition expanding on Sondi’s work at the intersection of gaming, rest, and Blackness. It invites audiences into speculative dreamscapes generated through game engines, where stillness becomes an act of defiance and play a method for imagining alternative worlds.

We live in a time of hyper-productivity, where rest is systemically denied—especially to Black and marginalised bodies. Our sleep is interrupted, our dreams surveilled, our idleness disciplined. But what happens when we refuse? When we stay in bed, let the mind wander, and dream not as escape, but as strategy? Inspired by Tricia Hersey’s Rest is Resistanceand Audre Lorde’s vision of self-care as political warfare, this exhibition argues that slowing down is an urgent disruption—one that resists the extractive logics of capitalism and colonialism.

Through speculative fiction, the exhibition sheds light on experiences and histories often simplified or erased. An interactive game installation leads visitors through layered dreamscapes, immersing them into dream space where rest becomes the terrain of resistance—not a reset. Here, gaming mechanics are disrupted and reimagined to center idleness and curiosity over productivity and efficiency.

A Different End to a Different Play explores dreams as portals to alternate ways of being. In these hyperspaces—between digital and ecological, software and flesh, wakefulness and sleep—bodies exist freely. Technology, often a site of control, is reclaimed as a storytelling tool, highlighting the potential within the liminal spaces of games.

A Different End to a Different Play joins the chorus of voices summoning new worlds.

Sondi (she/her) is an artist and researcher from Germany, born in Cameroon and based in the Netherlands. Her practice centers on worldbuilding and worlding, particularly within digital spaces and video games. She examines how power and narratives operate in virtual environments, tracing encoded biases, algorithmic discrimination, game mechanics, and the portrayal of people, places, and ecologies, while crafting new worlds that amplify marginalised voices and perspectives often excluded from dominant techno-futures.

DATES: A Different End to a Different Play will be on from July 12 to August 24, 2025
LOCATION : Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Lasondersingel 129-131
EXPO OPENING on Saturday, July 19th from 14:30 to 17:00