“Not Yet Real: Videogames, Theory, Criticism” Exhibition
Goethe-Institut Wyoming Building
This event has ended.
The unreality of games gives notice that reality is not yet real. Unconsciously they rehearse the right life.
Theodor W. Adorno
What is lost in the withering of semblance, or decay of aura, in works of art is matched by a huge gain in room-for-play.
Walter Benjamin
Videogames are often depicted as a monolithic entity—and an economic juggernaut—that engages users for endless hours in idle entertainment. In terms of their individual effects, they are deemed a psychologically addictive, destructive, or stultifying force that ought to be resisted in favor of more “meaningful” forms of aesthetic experience. Not Yet Real: Videogames, Theory, Criticism rejects such interpretations. By inviting inquiry about the critical possibilities within videogames themselves, the nature of play, representation in games, and the experiences of playing them, Not Yet Real highlights new and emerging approaches that pursue a more nuanced analysis of what is, by nearly any account, one of the dominant art forms of the twenty-first century.
Not Yet Real: Videogames, Theory, Criticism is a three-part program presented by the Goethe-Institut New York and the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. While there is a vast popular literature and a growing array of academic studies concerning videogames, Not Yet Real brings together several elements inviting new perspectives and hopes to encourage a wider public conversation on videogames from critical theoretical, humanistic, and aesthetic points of view.
Media
Schedule
from January 18, 2014 to February 02, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-01-18 from 18:00 to 20:00