FACT presents (darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts, a new exhibition by artist Sahjan Kooner, created in collaboration with young people aged 12-19 from Liverpool and Leigh.
Produced in partnership with youth groups Global Friends, Unity Youth, and Young Inspectors, Kooner’s ongoing project centres imagination as the most important form of technology while reinterpreting museum collections and exploring how stories are created and shared.
The exhibition is free to visit at FACT Liverpool until Sunday, 16 August 2026.
Through creative workshops, ten participants collaborated with Kooner to build new worlds and share their stories, culminating in the evolving installation (darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts.
This project began at Wigan Museum with Global Friends, a youth group based in Leigh, who worked with the artist to imagine the museums of tomorrow: places shaped by the participants’ identities, mythologies, and dreams.
From protective museums to teleporting artefacts, these speculative worlds position young people as storytellers, transforming collections into spaces where power, heritage, and imagination collide.
The exhibition at FACT expands on these worlds.
Within the gallery, audiences encounter a ‘dark forest’ growing around an infinity-symbol-shaped structure.
The exhibition reflects the ongoing collaboration between all participants, the stories they have shared, and the futures they have collectively imagined.
The learning programme at FACT centres participants as storytellers, as they examine the institutional and technological structures that define their lived experiences.
Supported by artists and a dedicated team, making art becomes a learning experience that gives participants space to challenge their understanding of the world and explore who they are.
Kooner recorded an interview with the team at FACT delving further into this process, which is presented as part of the installation.
Interactive Storytelling and 3D Technology in the Gallery
On one side, visitors can play a digital and tabletop storytelling game titled The Zone of Ghosts.
Guided by four characters, players work together to journey through dream museums filled with imagined objects inspired by the collection at Wigan Museum.
Using 3D printing and scanning technologies, the mythical objects, sculpted in clay by the participants, are animated in the digital game, transformed into golden artefacts displayed within the structure’s walls, and scaled down for use as pieces in the tabletop game.
Co-Creating a Fantasy Film and Speculative Futures
On the other side, a campfire offers space to reflect and imagine how different futures might be made.
Functioning as both a gathering space and a film set, the exhibition, alongside off-site filming locations including Princes Park, provides the backdrop for a new fantasy film created by Kooner and project participants.
Inspired by the worlds their Wigan and Leigh peers have created, the film explores what they would like to see and feel in a speculative future.
The group collaborates across every stage of the filmmaking process, from developing characters and designing costumes to writing scripts, performing, and filming.
Through this process, the young people embody new identities, exchange stories, and explore the meaning of objects within a fictional world.
The film is on display in the gallery from Friday, 24 July.
A special premiere to launch the film is planned for Thursday, 23 July, 18:00-20:00.
Please email press@fact.co.uk to RSVP.
