A new artistic video game by pixels·collectif, Brume, opened TOPO’s 2024-26 programming, which explores the themes nostalgia, ecology and simulacra. Beginning at 5:00 p.m. on 29 February 2024 this new installation in TOPO’s Vitrine staged a welcoming warm future – but troubling – to conclude the month of February 2024 similarly warm. The window display exhibition, which could be viewed Monday to Saturday from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m., lets visitors to play the game using an arcade terminal. The forty-minute video game and its eco-anxiety experience awaited you.

Brume is a character made of water whose mission is to put out the fires threatening the town of Picville-sur-Rivière. Knowing nothing about humans’ way of life, Brume discovers them through each object saved from the flames, quickly forming an idea of the causes of this climate disaster.

Brume, c’est un personnage composé d’eau qui a pour mission d’éteindre les feux menaçant la ville de Picville-sur-Rivière. Ne connaissant rien du mode de vie des humains, Brume les découvre à travers chaque objet sauvé des flammes et se fait vite une idée des causes derrière cette catastrophe climatique.

Driven by an eco-anxiety at once paralysing and motivating to act urgently, with Brume pixels·collectif proposes a challenge. How can we imagine other ways of inhabiting this planet when comfort is so comfortable?

Brume is an invitation to play: to play for pleasure, to think, to foil the everyday, to imagine other futures.

Brume was made in collaboration with the sound designer Guillaume Plourde. Phoebe Yī Lìng has translated Brume into English. The project is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.