Storytelling and installations, Gamania Antarctica Expedition

The exhibition called “Gamania Antarctica Expedition” curated by the Gamania Cheer Up Foundation chronicles the expedition to the South Pole - a dream come true for the members of the team from Taiwan. 


Adventure: a single word with thousands of associations. Something that seems to be missing from our well-planned, tidy, secure lives but that has always been the driver of discovery and innovation by human beings. Without this spirit of adventure that is an innate part of us, the human species would not even have evolved. 
The Gamania Cheer Up Foundation, established by Gamania Group, a leading player in the Taiwanese game industry, believes in the value of adventure and invests in people who dare to dream big in real life, young people in particular. Since they first completed the Polar Challenge in 2008, they faced lots of different extreme challenges. Then, in 2018, to celebrate the foundation’s tenth anniversary a cross-generational and multidisciplinary team was put together as the first team in the history of Taiwan to embark on an expedition to Antarctica. Their goal was to cross-country ski their way to the South Pole, which meant digging deep into their own personal resources.
But we all know that any adventure needs to be well-documented if we want people to really believe it happened, so it was also important to chronicle this dream come true. 
Which brings us to the reason behind the “Gamania Antarctica Expedition” exhibition in the company’s Taipei headquarters, curated by the Gamania Cheer Up Foundation. It is broken down into three themes: “Risks of the Expedition”, “The Menace of Nature”, and “The Calling of a Dream.”  The project depicts all aspects of the 30-day adventure and the 2-year plan for “An Expedition in Antarctica”.
The exhibition layout is both concrete and abstract and it brings together the aspects of the actual expedition with the psychological aspects of the adventure itself, from the early difficulties through to when the dream came true. This is all created by the particular atmospheres suggested by the exhibition organisers. So visitors get to see materials from the expedition, like some of the equipment used, and at the same time are given insight into the history and topography of the Antarctic, disclosed using simple language and appealing graphics.
The exhibition storytelling, strongly supported of course by the Gamania Group’s 20-year expertise in the world of video games gets across the idea of how tough this trip to the South Pole really was. And given the success of the team that only took 30 days to get there, the narrative behind the exhibition is also to fuel the hankering for adventure and the desire in the heart of every visitor to make their dreams come true. 
Perhaps this is the biggest challenge in a world that keeps shrinking: gone are the maps with vast unexplored areas, and the spirit of adventure now seems to be appeased in the virtual world.
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Christiane Bürklein

Project: Gamania Brand Center
Design & Coordination Team: Gamania Brand Center (http://gamaniabrandcenter.com/)
Creative Director: Eric Chen
Design Implementation: 
Gamania Brand Center - Jade Hong, Jack Chen, KY-POST
Is Good Thing - Caroline Yang, Chia-Nien Chang, Yuan-Yu Wu
Location: Taipei City, Taiwan
Year: 2018-19
Images: Te-Fan Wang