Neïl Beloufa's Pandemic Pandemonium Blends Gaming, NFTs, and Social Critique

Neïl Beloufa's exhibition 'Pandemic Pandemonium' at Canvas in Amsterdam is an immersive installation merging physical, digital, and fictional worlds. Visitors navigate a walk-on game board with stations like Screen Talk, Cheat Island, and Console of Quiz, scanning QR codes to control three animated 'Master Hosts' (Host A, B, C) that speak via text-to-speech and post on Discord. Prizes include silkscreen prints worth €75, €500, or €1,500 and NFTs. The show features the video series Screen Talk (originally from 2014, adapted during COVID-19), which parodies soap operas and pandemic management. Beloufa's production company EBB, specializing in Web3 solutions, co-created the exhibition. Visitors can colorize and buy the digital template Hand of Vengeance as an NFT. The exhibition critiques social inequality, venture capitalism, crypto economy, and algorithmic power, while exploring Web3 utopian ideals. It is an enlarged version of 'Digital Mourning' (Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan, 2021–22) and was first presented at Clearing, Brussels in 2022. Ticket sales cover production costs of prizes.