As adolescents, the chance to walk into a world renowned art museum and play a gargantuan-sized controller game of Street Fighter II might not have been something we dreamt possible. However, thanks to PS1 MoMA, it is now—literally—a virtual reality. This past weekend saw the New York debut of Beijing-based artist Feng Mengbo’s installation, Long March: Restart (2008), in which museum visitors can interact with a large-scale, fully-functioning video game. Based upon early video games like Street Fighter and Super Mario Bros., the installation draws classic imagery from these ’80s childhood staples and combines it with propaganda motifs from Communist China (the main character, whom site-dwellers play in the game, is a Red Army soldier). Using a wireless controller, museum visitors can help our hero blast through a variety of pixelated enemies in his digital path. To put it in strictly art world terms, the show is a “K-O”!

Long March: Restart is on view from 12/12/2010 – 04/04/2011.

Above: Feng Mengbo. Long March: Restart, 2008. Still from video game installation. Courtesy of the artist and Chambers Fine Art.

KEYWORDS: Feng Membo, MoMA, PS1, Street Fighter II, video games