The rhetorics of cultural colonization, adorned with a series of paralogisms.
Here is one: Games are Design (objects), Design is Art, therefore Games are Art. [And Art is Museums' property] Ouch.
Museums is where videogames go to die.
"Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?" (Manifesto of Futurism, 1909)
As Tale of Tales aptly put it last November:
"The 14 video games are for MoMA's Architecture and Design department, next to artworks like coffee cups and chairs."
"Videogames belong in an art museum as little as literature or dance or music. Or net.art for that matter."
LINK: MOMA
Submitted by Matteo Bittanti
