Get Inspired

Game Arts Curators Kit is a new seventy page handbook for anyone interested in bringing a curatorial eye to the presentation of videogames. Over 25 writers and editors have generously shared their field-tested experiences of exhibiting games, spanning the practical to the political, the ethical to the esthetic.

Beginning as an idea in a session led by María Luján Oulton and Chad Toprak at GAIA 2019, Chaz Evans and Rene G. Cepeda took up the massive task of coordinating the writing of over 25,000 words on our nascent art practice during GAIA 2021.

It’s currently available in wiki form and invites input from the community, with plans in progress to have it published physically by VGA Gallery. There will be a roundtable on its creation as a part of Society of Literature, Science and Arts 2021 on Oct. 1st.

We are more than half way through the Game Arts International Assembly 2021 at this point and we thought we’d give a bit of a summary of some of the highlights thus far. We chose to have Mer Grazzini doodle document the sessions to give people sense of what they were like! Here’s The New Spacemakers session:

The Game Arts International Assembly is a stretched symposium for game art curators and game community organizers.

9 sessions spread over two months. Free to one and all. And starting next week!

We have already received a number of exciting proposals for Game Arts International Assembly sessions and have started working with people to flesh them out. However, there’s still a few more days for you to submit any ideas you might have via our not-very-taxing form. For further inspiration check out our programming from our first edition. Selected sessions will receive an honorarium.

This time last year we held the first Game Arts International Assembly in Buenos Aires, and it was a pretty wonderful experience. Over twenty game arts curators, festival directors and community organizers travelled from a dozen different countries for a thinktank addressing our common challenges. Some of us explored Patagonia after, where the discussions continued.

Last year GAIN partnered with Ontario Creates and Canada Media Fund to create a new resource intended to help indies plan their exhibition and networking strategy, based on in-person interviews and surveys from 50+ creators across Canada. We’re hoping it’ll prove useful to the international community, so we’ve made the full PDF briefing available for free here.

The first Game Arts International Assembly happened in Buenos Aires at the end of November with over twenty participants having travelled from a dozen different countries.