Interview: Régine Debatty talks to Isabelle Arvers
Highly recommended: We Make Money Not Art's conversation with French curator Isabelle Arvers about the upcoming show GAMES REFLEXIONS. Here is an excerpt:
"[Régine Debatty] Hi Isabelle! Why do you think that now is a good time to reflect upon gaming? And more particularly about the relationship between our perception/construction of reality and video games.LINK:LINKLINK
[Isabelle Arvers] I don't know if this is the right time but it seems to me that gaming has adopted different forms and directions which allow us to approach it through a more complex lens than in the past. Games studies were developed in the 80s and they made it possible to look at gaming under various perspectives: psychoanalysis, economy, philosophy, political science, etc. The reflection about the video game issue is nothing new. However, gaming is starting to be perceived differently by the public and the media, so it seemed appropriate to support this trend by raising the issue in an exhibition located in a contemporary art space.
The issue of perception is very important to me ever since i wrote a dissertation about the virtual in the mid- 90s when I was wondering the impact that the virtual could have on our bodies and minds. I'm still asking myself this kind of question: each technique, software or language influences our way of seeing things, of approaching reality. But what about video games? One day, some students (and fans of video game) told me that they dreamt in computer-generated images, and even preferred this type of image to the ones they saw on TV, because they were more beautiful. I confess that I was deeply impressed by their remark.
I then thought that video games affect our imagination just like tales did once. Since I started creating machinima, I haven't looked at cities and the movement in the cities in the way I used to, it looks as if people are moving like in the games... Any ideas related to other realities impress me too. While thinking about this exhibition, I thought about Plato's cave, about these ideas which we perceive only through their reflection. The idea that there are parallel worlds attracts me and I 'd love to imagine them through games.
I am still waiting for computer-generated images to refer to something that is not seen, I expect them to lead me to the other side... Most games that try to mimic reality produce an image too sleek, too smooth, that seems far removed from what I would like to discover. That is why when I found the compilation Pirate Kart and the amount of games with universes so diverse, trash and funny, I wanted to go into this direction and exhibit them in a gallery. What made me particularly happy during the Pirate Kart exhibition at the ESAix gallery was that people told me that it gave them confidence, that they made this kind of games at home but didn't think it would interest anyone else. It's a bit like opening a world of possibles and extracting pearls from the game jams world and from the independent games circles to make the broader public discover them." (Régine Debatty)