Bonus Level exhibition

Game to PLAY: https://ggrachus.itch.io/bonus-level-v10-pc-build
created by Václav Janoščík, artwork and design by Eva Fajčíková

What is it that games provide us? Do they fit our playful “ludic” nature of ourselves (Johan Huizinga)? Why is it so easy to incorporate their subversive logic into reproduction of the system and power (from gaming the system to disciplination of the gaming)? Why is their open-ended and experimental logic so easily funneled into repetitive forms and stupid content? Why are artist  in general (despite numerous exception) and the artworld so disengaged from actual gaming?

 

Among all other media games come the closest to the idea of providing us with the space of our dreams, where we can act in an transparent, uninhibited way - in one word, the Imaginary. Of course it would be too easy to just believe they represent what we dream about (that would force us to claim that millions of users just wanna shoot and fight other people). The interfacing, the game between the imaginary and the real, between the virtual and the IRL/AFK, is much more complex.

excerpt from text by curator Václav Janoščík
foto credit Ján Šipocz