False Estate: Inhabiting

Somerset House Studios

4-6pm, Thursday 21 August 2025

False Estate: Inhabiting was a LAN party that happened as part of the series of events unfolded at The Pits by Sophia Al-Maria and Lydia Ourahmane.

The event presented the videogame, False Estate (haunted home) (2022-2026) alongside books that informed the work, available for participants to dip into:
> Against Landlord by Nick Bano
> Unhoused: Adorno and the Problem of Dwelling by Matt Waggoner
> From Sylhet to Spitalfields: Bengali Squatters in 1970s East London by Shabna Begum

Together, we played the game, talked about renting experiences, and shared resources.

False Estate (haunted home) (2022-2026) is a video game that unpacks (not)belonging in relation to renting and immigrating. Players engage in first-person gameplay, taking apart a bedroom reconstructed from memories and photos of rented homes. As the player movse through the space, they click through a collage of subtitles [a mix of quotes, diary entries, fiction, critical analysis, and poems] that reflect on the conditions of renting: no marks left, fixed terms, sudden departures.

Many thanks to Joshua Roland for his support troubleshooting the game build export, Sahaya Jamesfor the conversations, and April Forrest Lin for sending the PDF of a book.

The continued development of this project is supported by the Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice Fund.

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A test version of False Estate can be played here.

Please allow a few minutes for the game to load. It runs nicely on Safari/Chrome.

Use the W, A, S, D keys to move, mouse to look around, left-click to read the next line + chip away the room.

Hit Esc to un-hide the cursor when you are done.