Hibernation

Hibernation is running at FACT Liverpool from 28 September to 16 November, and it's not your usual gallery show. It's an immersive, interactive narrative you play on a game station in the foyer, so you're as much a part of it as you are watching it. The story is written from the experience of living alone during COVID, and it draws on years of hallucinatory insomnia and visual meditation practices, which gives it a strange, drifting quality that lingers long after you've stepped away.

It's a collaboration between two members of FACT's own Front of House team: Jacob Riley, who handles the storytelling and music, and Katie Pinch, who provides the illustration, animation and design. Together they've built a surreal, comic and tragic tale set in a near future where tech-encouraged isolation has become the norm and the climate crisis has forced everyone into a period of enforced hibernation. As you play, you make choices and collaborate with others, so the story shifts depending on how you navigate it.

What you'll find on-site is an extensive demo of a work in progress, rather than a finished game, so it's a glimpse into something still being shaped. If you want to keep going after you've left the building, there's also an online version available at hibernationtwine.itch.io/hibernation.

You can find it in the foyer on the ground floor of FACT Liverpool, 88 Wood Street, L1 4DQ, running through to 16 November.