When
Wed 1 Mar 2023
Like a tree falling silently in an empty forest, what is a videogame if no one is there to play it?
Playing videogames is a collaborative act of creation. Each playthrough is a performance that puts players in conversation with game makers, sometimes in artistic, insightful, humorous or provocative – even jaw dropping – ways. Each performance is unique, changed by the hardware a game is played on, the environment and point in time in which it is experienced, and the identity, history and intentions of the player.
Take your hands off the controller for an evening to join playful curators Marie Foulston and Jini Maxwell at ACMI as they explore a selection of hand-picked and iconic videogame performances.
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About the speakers
Marie Foulston
Marie Foulston is a leading curator and creative director of exhibitions, installations and experiences that specialise in videogames, play and digital culture. Previously she was Curator of Videogames at the V&A where she lead the curation of the headline exhibition Videogames, was guest director of experimental games festival Now Play This at Somerset House and co-founded the UK alternative videogame collective the Wild Rumpus. Across her career she has worked alongside a host of international organisations and leading cultural institutions including the Smithsonian, the Game Developers Conference, London Film Festival, Penguin Random House, the Design Museum, Channel 4, ACMI, the Art Gallery of Ontario and MoPOP.
Jini Maxwell
Jini Maxwell is a curator at ACMI and co-organiser of ACMI X WIP night, a monthly meetup for screen creatives to showcase their works-in-progress. Jini previously worked as a creative producer on Freeplay Independent Games Festival, the longest-running independent games festival in the world, and has curated independent exhibitions of playful and interactive work.
Jini is also an award-winning writer. They are a videogame criticism columnist for The Saturday Paper, and contribute videogame writing to ABC Arts. In 2021, they helped establish Gameshub, an independent Australian outlet for videogame journalism, where they worked as content lead. They were awarded Best Gaming Journalist at the Samsung IT Journalism Awards 2021.