The Compression Zone is a video game performance that explores compression algorithms as one of the primary engines of world-making today. Shaheer performs the game live, navigating a perilous, multi-resolution dungeon where all the world’s data is sent to be compressed. 

Part autobiographical, part grounded in archival research on twentieth-century nationalism, and partly besieged by memes and conspiracy, the game moves through uneven resolutions of rendering and rigour—journeying across South Asia’s digital borderlands and through fiber-optic cables in the Pacific.

We've also produced a special holographic sticker pack for Ghost in the Loop. Come to the event with your own stickers and you can swap for a pack, featuring images from Shaheer Tarar, Valia Lolidou, Martyna Marciniak, Mariana Marangoni, Linden Derichs and Celune Acheampong.

Ghost in the Loop is produced as part of the Inverted World Labs in partnership with Goethe-Institut London