Celebrate the Release of the VGA Reader Issue 2 at Quimby’s

VGA Reader Issue 2 Release
Saturday, March 9th, 2019, 7pm
Quimby’s Bookstore
1854 W North Ave
Free

Come join the staff of the Video Game Art Gallery, their Editorial Board, and their friends, family, and colleagues in celebrating the release of Issue #2 of the Video Game Art Reader, a scholarly peer-reviewed art history publication. The VGAR is a labor of intellectual love for the VGA Gallery staff and their collaborators, an attempt to not only deepen the discourse around video games, but to also make it more accessible to the public and inclusive of marginalized voices. The theme for this issue was “survival strategy,” an investigation not just into the defined genre of “survival games,” but the methods by which all games can become tools for conditioning, coping, and creating within the digital world. For Issue #2 we solicited article that placed video games within the larger context of radical, activist artworks, as well as those which examine how the skills harnesses within a digital environment can be applied outside of it. Of the dozen or so articles that were submitted for consideration and inclusion in this issue, seven emerged from our peer-review process to be incorporated into this volume. Issue #2 includes works by media scholars Martin Zeilinger writing on the limits of digital performance art, Andrew Bailey examining how exploration of digital spaces can transform understanding of physical ones, Michael Anthony DeAnda investigating the consequences of digital surveillance, Luisa Salvador Dias discussing how video games depict war, Michael Paramo arguing for better representation of queer characters, and Treva Michelle Legassie probing the implications of rendering oneself in a video game. This issue also includes a practitioner statement by Elizabeth LaPensée on her water-protecting side-scroller, Thunderbird Strike, and an interview with the evocative game designer and scholar, Anna Anthropy.

The event will begin at 7pm. Light snacks and refreshments will be served and a statement by the team behind the VGAR will made about the efforts behind Issue #2 and the goals for Issue #3. Copies of the latest the VGAR will be available for sale as will the Chicago New Media Catalogue, also produced by the VGA Gallery. There will be no charge for admission. All are welcome.