The Santa Mònica opens ‘Boom Crash Candy Crush’, an Exhibition on Dopamine, Data and Militarization 

On 28 October, Boom Crash Candy Crush opens to the public, an exhibition that begins with a question that is as unsettling as it is necessary: what do an apparently innocent video game like Candy Crush, attention economies and contemporary military infrastructures have in common? Behind the endless cascades of colourful candies and the micro-rewards that have turned the game into a global phenomenon lies a system capable of shaping behaviour and transforming everyday actions into information of significant economic value.

The exhibition explores how digitalization and militarization permeate our bodies. From the movement of our fingers across a screen to the position of our neck or the direction of our gaze, our constant relationship with digital devices generates habits and data that feed commercial interests, intelligence systems and surveillance mechanisms. In this context, people become both consumers and producers of information.

Far from being an isolated phenomenon, this process forms part of a much broader transformation. If, during the Industrial Revolution, the logics of capital shaped bodies through factories and machines, today they do so through technologies embedded in nearly every aspect of daily life. Playing games, commuting or consuming digital content all become part of an ecosystem in which value extraction operates almost invisibly. Through the lenses of gaming and surveillance, the exhibition reflects on the erosion of autonomy in an era in which leisure and warfare increasingly share technologies and infrastructures, both in physical spaces and on our screens.

Curated by Joana Moll and Enric Puig Punyet, the exhibition brings together around twenty local and international artists, including Hito Steyerl, Shona Illingworth, Heba Y. Amin, Jessica Ekomane, Aram Bartholl, Ben Grosser and Mario Santamaría, whose works explore the intersections of digital technologies, attention economies, surveillance and militarization.

Beyond exposing these dynamics, Boom Crash Candy Crush proposes an interactive and performative experience that engages visitors through installations, architectures and artistic devices, inviting them to reflect on the physiological, emotional and political consequences of contemporary digital life.