Interview: María Luján Oulton and the Argentinian Game Art Scene
GameScenes is conducting a series of interviews with artists, critics, curators, and gallery owners operating in the field of Game Art, as part of an ongoing investigation of the social history of this fascinating artworld. Our goal is to illustrate the genesis and evolution of a phenomenon that changed the way game-based art is being created, experienced, and discussed today. The conversation with Argentinian curator and event manager María Luján Oulton is part of Season Four and was conducted by Mathias Jansson via email. It took place in September 2012.
Born in Buenos Aires on September 25, 1982, María Luján Oulton is the mastermind behind the hyper-active Object a, an art gallery and creative center located in Buenos Aires which promotes cultural and artistic events focusing on the interplay between art and technology, especially video games. In 2009, Oulton co-organized Game On! Art in Play, the first major Game Art exhibition in Argentina. She has not stopped since.
GameScenes: Can you describe the nature and goals of Object a?
María Luján Oulton: Object a takes its name after the lacanian notion “objet petit a” (object little-a) which stands for the unattainable object of desire. We are an Art Gallery and Cultural Producer specialized in the field of Art and New Media that organizes exhibitions, congress and cultural activities. We are a private and independent institution, with no governmental funding or affiliation of any type. Depending on each activity we work alongside artists, critics, educational institutions and technology companies.
GameScenes: Your organization has been very active in the last few years. Can you tell us something about the first show you organized, Game on! Art at Play, in 2009?
María Luján Oulton: The first edition of Game on! Art at Play took place in April 2009. Back then we made a first approach to the possibility of videogames as an art form. We organized the exhibition in three sections.
Section 1: we invited national videogame companies to demonstrate in their own way why video games could be art; there were videos with interviews, inedit developments, works of game-art and a selection of video games in exhibition.
Section 2: we made a selection of artgames from different countries. We exhibited video games that were created with an artistic conception, whether it was for the visual work or because they were conceptual proposals. We showed The Intruder by Natalie Bookchin, Septiembre 12 by Gonzalo Frasca, The Endless Forest and The Path by Tale of Tales, Flower by That Game Company and The Nerve Game by Van Sowerwine.
Section 3: we organized a variety of activities to accompany the games on exhibition, such as live game-art performances, dissertations and workshops.
The exhibition was a success in the press and among the public. We were visited by a wide range of public, mostly young people related to arts, design, new media and gaming industry.
GameScenes: Were there any other significant exhibitions focusing on Game Art in Argentina before 2009?
María Luján Oulton: Game on! Art at Play is the first exhibition in its type in Argentina. All previous approaches to the subject of video game were works of arts inspired in video games or interventions/subversions of video games. There were no exhibitions based on the relation of video games and art.
GameScenes: The follow-up to Game On! took place in 2011. How did the second edition differ from the previous one?
María Luján Oulton: On May 2011 there was a second edition of Game on! Art at Play. In that occasion we were invited to be part of a bigger festival called FASE (an international art and technology exhibition) At that time we were assigned three rooms were we exhibited a selection of national independent developments, works made by students of videogames, art-games made by artists of new media and a selection of four independent/experimental games recently awarded by the IGF 2011. The exhibition lasted 4 days, during which we organized a programme of live performance by game-artists and game-animators.
And this year is the third time for the exhibition. Can you tell me some about this year’s theme?
On the 25th October of 2012 we opened the third edition. This time we intended to show an Iberoamerican Panorama of the State of The Art of experimental and art-games. We worked in association with CCEBA (Spain Cultural Center in Buenos Aires) opening a call for submissions of art-game proposals. The exhibition took place in three locations in simultaneous (two locations belonging to CCEBA and the third one was at San Martin Cultural Center). All three locations presented a selection of experimental and art-games, as well as interactive installations that not only involved the appropriation of videogame devices such as the kinect but also intended a ludic experience. We exhibited works from Argentina, Spain, Chile, Mexico, Brasil and Uruguay.
One of the locations was also destined to the exhibition of game-art works and was the host of a Congress organized in summits on game-art, music, experimental video-games and interactive art, edutainment and Ibero-American panorama, for this last summit we counted with the presence of speakers from Colombia, Uruguay, Spain, Chile and Argentina, we also organize video-conferences with Mexico and Venezuela. Additionally we put on an edutainment Clinique and scheduled the first screening in Argentina of Indie Game: The Movie.
GameScenes: What have happened during these three years in the field of videogames and art?
María Luján Oulton: During this three years there has been a major growth in the field of art games. Not only has improved the quality of works from the independent developers but also many technology specialized artists had begun to experience with videogame devices. Some universities are opening video-game courses and careers and new-media-art-phds are starting to acknowledge the impact of video-games in our society and the wide range of possibilities they can offer to the art field.
There is a great difference between our first exhibition in 2009 and the present one in 2012. Back then we made a first approach to the notion of art-games; we didn’t have many national works with the entity of art-works or even experimental projects, aside a few exceptions like Daniel Benmergui. On the contrary this year we had a hard time making a selection since there were plenty of interesting proposals.
GameScenes: Did you arrange any special events around the 2012 year’s edition of the exhibition?
María Luján Oulton: This edition took the form of a Congress. We organized a series of summits on game-art, music, experimental video games and interactive art, edutainment and Ibero-american panorama. We intend to accompany every exhibition with complementary activities such as workshops ands talks, so to offer a immersive experience to the visitors.
GameScenes: How would you describe the Argentinian Game Art scene? Seen from here, it seems very lively and creative - in some ways, it is developing its own aesthetic.
María Luján Oulton: Argentina presents a promising panorama of independent developers that are working on experimental and artistic games. Daniel Benmergui is a perfect example, a young Argentinean developer who won this year the Nuovo Award at IGF with his game “Storyteller”, a major breakthrough for any indie developer, he specializes in narrative and experimental game-play. Another developer who has been making big progress with his works is Agustin Perez Fernandez (Tembac) his latest developments (Vestigios and Consequences) are more related to conceptual art.
There is also a growing number of new-media-artists that are beginning to explore the possibilities of interaction with video games or with tools that belong to the video game industry, such as kinect or move-controllers. They are exploring different kinds of interactive installations, generative art and even conceptual works, among them Diego Alberti, Gabriel Rud, Federico Joselevich Puiggros, Ivan Ivanoff and Monica Jacobo.
There are also some educational institutions which are introducing this kind of experimentation in their phds such as UNTREF or in their own art collectives such as Proyecto Untitled @ Maimonides University.
LINKLINK:LINK:Related: Monica Jacobo and the Argentinina Game Art Scene
Text: Mathias Jansson
Editing: Matteo Bittanti