The Regeneration Game

This group exhibition brings together work by artists based in Dublin, Belfast, and London/Amsterdam, alongside archive footage from Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive, to interrogate housing as one of the defining and persistent socio-political inequalities of our time. Spanning gaming, film, installation, and printmaking, this exhibition and events programme mobilises art as a tool for collective resistance, offering playful yet provocative alternatives to structures of dominance.

Beyond the domestic and infrastructural inequalities facing the wider population, precarious living conditions for artists are entangled with the precarity of their work and workspaces. Through lenses which include cultural stigma associated with material conditions such as damp, increasing instability and scarcity of cultural space, landgrabs and landbanking, each project reflects on an existence which somehow both ceaselessly relocates us, but simultaneously traps us without agency in adolescence. 

NAMACO’s playable 16-bit video game Mega Dreoilín is a radical reimagining of edutainment designed for the demographic of ‘Generation Rent’. Positioning itself as a revolutionary instructional manual, Mega Dreoilín helps players to learn about the bureaucratic land dominance imposed on Ireland by successive waves of colonisers, landlords and global multinationals, as well as the strategies required for collective resistance against these sinister powers, positing that Ireland’s age-old land question is not as complicated as our political representatives would have us believe.

Avril Corroon’s GOT DAMP is an installation that explores damp as 'a crisis of nature in the home' and the experience of the precariat within contemporary Britain and Ireland. The project worked with communities across South East London and the Community Action Tenants Union in Dublin, exchanging with 55 households. Avril provided energy efficient dehumidifiers and support to manage damp, whilst households contributed experiences, ideas and collected 1800L of water in dehumidifiers. The collected water from the dehumidifiers is exhibited alongside a 30min film which was made partially with a thermal camera documenting the lived experience of households who live with damp in their homes and the materiality of damp itself. GOT DAMP was originally commissioned and exhibited by TACO! in London and Project Arts Centre in Dublin. 

Through a series of Open House events, Marta will invite community participation through radical mapping, objects, screenings, and oral history exploring collective nostalgia as a catalyst for change. Alongside the responses she gathers, Marta will embark on processes of drawing, performance, and printing, using this residency period to develop a new body of work.

Delve into archival fragments of housing issues and activism, through the lens of news reporters, documentary and community film makers. The rolling archive and screenings are programmed by Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive and guests throughout the exhibition. 

Play dates

If you are engaged with issues of housing precarity or activism, we will be arranging a series of ‘play dates’ throughout The Regeneration Game where we can share archive material and show you around the exhibition. Please contact jane@pssquared.org if this is of interest.  

About the artists

Avril Corroon

Avril (she/her) works with sculpture, installation, moving image, performance, and social practice to explore situations and sites, especially cities, where precarious conditions and neoliberal ideology have become everyday. Avril’s website 

Marta Dyczkowska

Marta (she/her) born in 1980 in Poland, is a visual artist in Belfast, where she is a member of Vault Artist Studios. Her artistic practice revolves around considering spaces and societal shifts, using remnants of material culture, architecture, memory, and archives. Marta’s website 

Dónal Fullam (NAMACO)

Dónal (he/him) is Assistant Professor in Creative and Cultural Industries, based in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at University College Dublin. His research deals with music and art in contemporary algorithmic culture, human-computer creative relationships and intersections between art and technology in general. Dónal’s Instagram

Han Hogan (NAMACO)

Han Hogan (she/they) is an artist with a background in science. They regularly collaborate with other practitioners on projects, which include a radio show celebrating experiments in music and sounds by genderqueer and marginalised communities, and a mobile screenprinting unit which is used as a press for housing activist groups. Han’s Instagram 

About the partners

Belfast Film Festival is an international festival running since 1995 dedicated to screening the best in new, short and classic cinema from all over the world. The Festival proudly boasts a diverse and wide-ranging programme curated by programmers Rose Baker and Jess Kiang whose 2022 programme was described by the Irish Times as “An Invigorating Jolt of Culture.” As well as championing local film with the Irish Shorts competition and NI Independent strand, last year the festival pioneered its International Competition which brought films from all over the world to the festival from Ukraine to South Korea. Film as an experience is at the festival’s core, from site specific screenings to moving image art exhibits. Belfast XR Festival, the virtual reality strand of the festival, is dedicated to showcasing the best of new immersive technology content. 

The Digital Film Archive (DFA) is a flagship Northern Ireland Screen resource, created to ensure broad access to the region’s rich moving image heritage. Spanning over a century, from 1897 to the present day, the DFA (www.digitalfilmarchive.net) is an online treasure trove that chronicles Northern Ireland’s cultural, social, and historical journey. It also features material documenting pre-Partition Ireland, offering valuable insights for audiences across the UK and Ireland, and internationally. With almost 6,000 items freely accessible, the DFA encompasses a wide range of genres, formats, and themes. From rare silent films to contemporary documentaries, from newsreels to home movies, the archive provides a window into some of the lives, stories, and events that have shaped Northern Ireland. Supported by the Department for Communities. 

TV listings

TV listings curated by Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film Archive Visit The Regeneration Game during this year’s Belfast Film Festival. 

Choose your channel and decide what archive to watch from our TV Guide: 

Channel 1: Challenge (c.1965), 14 minutes Watch the full film here: 

Made by the Northern Ireland Housing Trust  Outline of the Northern Ireland Housing Trust’s plans post-WWII. Explores housing in Belfast and Derry with a focus on high-rise buildings which were proposed as epitome of modern living. 

Channel 2: Craigavon, New City (2025), 45 minutes Director Colm Laverty Watch the full film here:  

New documentary film charting the history of the new city of Craigavon. Craigavon designated in 1965, was designed to be a modern, linear city incorporating the existing towns of Lurgan and Portadown to address post-war housing shortages in Northern Ireland, while creating a new economic and industrial centre in the province. However the scheme was beset with problems relating to controversy over the vesting of land for the project displacing long established families, politics and the overall concept. Over 50 years on this film reflects on the successes and failures of the Craigavon project through the use of new and archival interview footage and documentary film. The film was produced by Colm Laverty and the Northern Ireland Screen ; with additional support from the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and The National Lottery Heritage Fund through the Lurgan Townscape Heritage Scheme . 

Channel 3 (UTV): Counterpoint: Housing (1979), 24 minutes Watch the full programme here:  

This 1979 edition of UTV’s Counterpoint follows the woes of the housing market at the time. The Housing Executive in Northern Ireland wished to sell 54,000 of their homes. The people living in this social housing were tempted into ownership, but concerns were raised about finding the funds. The possibility arose then of co-ownership and the programme looks at the options available to working class families in a changing landscape of housing. The Lesson is Ulster: Housing (1987), 24 minutes This episode focuses on the challenges and failures of housing in Northern Ireland.  

Channel 4: On the Manor: Fighting Back (1987), 26 mins 24 secs Watch the full programme here.  

A Yorkshire Television documentary from 1987 that focuses on how some residents of the Manor area of Sheffield are responding to the high unemployment and poverty on the council housing estate. It focuses on a residents’ theatre group in the run up to the June General Election, reflecting both the demoralisation – attributed to unemployment, poor housing, poverty and untrustworthy politicians – and the fighting spirit of at least some of those living on the Estate. This is the last of a series of four themed programmes that were aired in August 1987, and later re-edited into a single shorter programme broadcast on Channel 4, this time naming those residents who are interviewed.  Yet, unfortunately, information on those featured in the programmes is hard to come by, including that of the ad hoc theatre group who performed the agit-prop play, more common in the 1970s and ‘80s.  Courtesy of Yorkshire and North East Film Archive https://www.yfanefa.com 

Channel 5: Leaving the Village, 14 minutes Director Ryan Ralph 

Residents of the Village share their experiences of community, demolition and relocation. Features Brian and Patricia Stephenson; Anne and Bill Dickson and Alan Bush. Produced by Below the Radar as part of Northern Ireland Screen’s Aim High.   

Channel 6: Nevermind Walnut Street (2023), 13 minutes Director Marta Dyczkowska Watch the trailer here: 

'Never Mind Walnut Street' is the intimate story of Marta Dyczkowska’s life and loss, set against the backdrop of the sweeping gentrification of Belfast. An intimate story of Marta Dyczkowska’s life and loss is set against the backdrop of the sweeping gentrification of Belfast. Through a heartfelt letter addressed to a close friend, Marta takes us on a journey through the transformations that have taken place in the once- familiar city they both called home. Looking out from her kitchen window on Walnut Street, Marta reminisces about the time when she was embraced by a vibrant community that provided her with a sense of belonging she had longed for since leaving Poland. This poignant narrative serves as a tribute from Marta, a Polish artist, to the city of Belfast that she has come to love and cherish. Against the backdrop of Belfast's energetic and rebellious music scene, we are introduced to Colin McQuillan, the lead singer of Runnin' Riot, as he welcomes Marta into his makeshift bar in the kitchen, forging a fast and enduring friendship. Also showing Rising Damp - Ballygomartin (1967) Ulster Television’s silent footage of The Belfast Corporations Housing Committee visit housing in Ballygomartin that are in an appalling condition. Damp has riddled the buildings. Thank you to the film makers, collections and technical support from Paul Moore for making this possible.

PS² is primarily supported by: The National Lottery through the Arts Council of Northern Ireland; Belfast City Council through the Artists' Studios & Workspace Organisational Grant; and Arts & Business NI Blueprint Investment Grant.

Selected programmes are funded by: Belfast City Council Bank of Ideas, Necessity, Freelands Foundation and Arts Council England, Esmé Mitchell Trust, and project partners including NI Screen and Outburst Queer Arts Festival.