Included in the anthology Stronger Than Bone, as part of the 13th Gwangju Biennale, is my essay on video games, art and feminism. Entitled “Video Games: Art, Inclusion, and the Techno-cultural Imaginary,” it considers the stakes of a gendered conversation around video games. In it, I write:
“What is going on within video games as visual culture is merely one dimension of a larger struggle against a persisting failure of the imagination around which futures are envisioned, who belongs in them, and who drives them. These ideas are tied up in art and visual culture. By reading versions of technological futures against the grain of their highly masculinist fantasies, the work of artists, game designers, and critical game scholars is part of a greater project that makes space for the subjective, the responsive, and for some of the internal narratives that may inform a personal understanding of such games. This is an effort to reach through the most offending of these images, to grasp the political affect that emanates from games as deeply aesthetic experiences, to cultivate more inclusive storytelling, and through the alchemy of theory and practice, to imagine futures anew. The critical conversation at the center of technology belongs to all of us. It is mine to have, and it is yours.”
FORTHCOMING IN 2021
SORAYA MURRAY 