A Museum of Dubious Splendors.
- project Somewhere.
A Museum of Dubious Splendors, is a storybook from the world of Somewhere.
It is an adaptation of a series of essays written by Mir UmarHassan, a Gujarati poet whose works have proven notoriously difficult to translate because of the mellifluous use of Urdu and Hindi in his compositions.
We first encountered the writings of Mir UmarHassan in the archive room of the Sanghralaya (Museum) at Matsyapur. Copies of his essays were bound together in ledgers and stored there, evidently unused and unread. Of all his writings that we have assiduously collected over the past decade, it is his chronicle of the collection of Ruhan that fascinates us the most.
These stories entitled "in Dubious Splendor", were written (in Gujarati) in nineteen sixty two for the Malwa Chronicle, but were mangled and edited without the author's permission prior to their publication in serialized form. The collection of stories, became momentarily infamous as the subject of the first court case to arbitrate authorial ownership in Independent India.
Even today, despite countless restorative efforts by scholars, it cannot be said with with any certainty that the text that we used for this adaptation was the original as written by UmarHassan.
Credits :
Created with support from India Foundation for the Arts & Technicolor.
Press :
In short: you get to read some nice short stories and look at lovely little rooms. Oleomingus are making some of the prettiest dang video games around. Rock Paper Shotgun.
Oleomingus’s approach to games is hyper-literary. Venture Beat.
Somewhere is a game that Studio Oleomingus has been working on for more than half a decade ... but Somewhere might not exist. PC Gamer June 2018 print edition.
... spaces that challenge the idea of singular spaces and universal narratives. India Today (May 2018).
The game is a story book, a baroque architectural project and a literary puzzle rolled into one. The Week (May 2018).
There’s a very comfortable dream logic at play in much of Oleomingus’ work. This latest window into the fantastical realms and stories of Somewhere is one of the best examples. IGN's Best indie games of 2017 you might have missed.
A Museum of Dubious Splendors is a visual mythology of department store goods. A joyous paean to the mundane. New Normative.
A surrealist art gallery in free download form, A Museum of Dubious Splendors is the latest addition to Studio Oleomingus' long-running Somewhere project. PC Gamer, best free games of 2017.
Studio Oleomingus offers a vibrant world of uncertain fictions and exploration. It might be the most exciting studio in game development right now. PC Gamer, best free games of 2018.