FACT celebrates its 20th anniversary with packed programme of events

Liverpool’s FACT is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a bumper programme of exhibitions, events, performances and activities at its Wood Street site.

The 2023 programme kicks off on April 20 by celebrating Eurovision with award-winning immersive artist Darren Emerson’s In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats.

Emerson’s euphoric VR interactive adventure will transport its audience into the heart of the Acid house movement as it invites people to search for an illegal rave over one night in Coventry in 1989. The installation will be at FACT until May 15.

Sitting alongside will be a free exhibition of multimedia playable video game works from Tokyo-based artist LuYang.

Entertaining, thought-provoking, dark and bizarre, LuYang’s Arcade Liverpool runs from April 27 to September 17.

The artist says: “Creating a game is like constructing your own universe. The works exhibited in my solo show at FACT are interactive – game works – from my art practices.”

FACT will also take part in this year’s Liverpool Biennial, running from June 10 to September 17, and will present a new large scale work jointly commissioned with the Biennial which will explore the festival’s theme uMoya: The Sacred Return of Lost Things.

The venue first opened its doors in 2003 and is the UK’s leading centre for art, film and the creative use of technology, with three gallery spaces and four cinema screens. Meanwhile a new studio/lab will be launched this autumn for emerging artists, curators, researchers and film-makers.

Above: Uma Breakdown - Earth AD. Photo by W Speller. Top: In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats. Image courtesy of the artist and East City Films.

FACT’s birthday weekend, from October 19-22, will be marked with four days of free performances, parties, films, talks and family activities.

And then curator-in-residence Elizabeth Brown will transform the FACT galleries with a winter exhibition, opening on October 19, which imagines futures where we are forced to leave Earth and travel to distant planets, imagining how we could reshape our existence – centring collaboration and hope.

It includes Uma Breakdown’s Earth AD, inspired by horror film The Evil Dead II, in which the artist and games designer takes us on a journey through the gothic genre and its relationship to horror, intimacy of care and technology.

FACT director and chief executive Nicola Triscott says: “FACT is internationally known for championing new ideas and interactive art that experiments with digital technology.

“Through our talent development and learning programmes we nurture the next generation of artists, creatives and storytellers.

“Across the galleries and online, visitors can explore and interact with immersive art experiences that reimagine our present realities and dream how to do things differently.”

For more details on the 2023 programme visit the website HERE