MUSH – Most Dismal Swamp

Most Dismal Swamp is both a place and a practice. Emerging out of the curatorial experiments of Dane Sutherland, who’s focus had previously centered around gallery exhibitions, distributive sonic fiction, club nights and other live events, Most Dismal Swamp is described by its creator as “an art project, a curatorial MMORPG, a fiction, a party, and a mixed-reality biome.” Launching the project back in 2019 with Swamp Protocol at arebyte gallery and Whale Fall at Gossamer Fog, two of London’s leading audiovisual art spaces, Most Dismal Swamp gestures towards a new kind of group show, one that exists contiguously between physical space and localised virtual worlds built with the express purpose of exploring the connections between interdependent mixed-media art practices. “Most Dismal Swamp invokes the swamp as a conceptual model for understanding and navigating our present mixed reality paradigm,” explains Sutherland. “Simultaneously solid land and fluid water, yet also neither, swamps embody a topology of mud