At ACMI, You Can Play Through Chinese History Armed With Coca-Cola Cans
Feng Mengbo's Long March: Restart turns the Red Army's famous retreat into a giant, playable side-scrolling videogame. It's free at ACMI until January.
What happens when you run a turning point of 20th-century history through the logic of Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter II? Chinese artist Feng Mengbo has spent years answering that question, and the result is now playable, for free, on the ground floor of ACMI in Melbourne.
History as a side-scroller
Long March: Restart takes its inspiration from the Long March, the Chinese Red Army's epic military retreat of 1934 to 1936. Feng transforms it into an immersive side-scrolling videogame projected across two giant screens. You guide a lone Red Army soldier through levels drawn from historical landmarks, retro games and Cold War science fiction, fighting supernatural enemies and pop culture figures with an unlikely weapon: cans of Coca-Cola.
You can grab the controller and play, or simply watch the soldier march on through time and space. Either way, it is one of the most fun things in a Melbourne gallery right now.
A landmark of digital art
Underneath the humour is a serious idea. By mashing together communist and capitalist symbols, videogame references and national myths, Feng asks how history gets built, retold and replayed through the images and systems around us. Feng, born in Beijing in 1966, is regarded as a pioneer of digital and videogame-based art, and this is the first time this landmark work has been shown in Melbourne. It is on loan from the M+ Sigg Collection in Hong Kong and presented with the City of Melbourne's Now or Never festival.
Bonus round
To mark the exhibition, ACMI and Now or Never commissioned three new arcade games, which you can play free in the foyer near the ACMI Shop.
Details
- Where: Ground Floor, ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne
- When: until 31 January 2027, 10am to 5pm
- Cost: free, by donation
Source: ACMI. Image courtesy of ACMI.
