Everything Is Political

In the end everything is political. Also the personal. The decisions we make, all actions we take and the conclusions we make, we base on underlying assumptions and values. Those assumptions and values aren’t shared by everybody. Also the space we get assigned as a human being, comes from our views, that can be contrary on the view of an individual and the other. Usually the choice that someone makes in his personal life but also in a group situation is connected to money and power and the continuation of their own power- and financial position.

Can politics come back in the world of popular culture? Of course. If you take it literally ; think about protest music and the political cartoons that got everybody’s attention the last couple of years.

In the exhibition “Everything is Political. The Politics of Gaming” Nieuwe Vide researched the relationship between video, art and politics.

How do you spread a message through a popular medium? Sometimes politics are in the background in the art pieces, as a sketch for a social situation in a country. Sometimes the political statement is very present. Sometimes the body is forced in a unpleasant situation and disappears in a bigger system of power, violence and/or money. Sometimes the body loses its way in a sigh of despair. Will love tear us apart? Will love tear me apart? How do I keep myself standing, how do I play, how do I manipulate, hoe am I being played? Am I trapped in a cage of power or am I free to do whatever I want?

In this exhibition artist and game developers show work. We all called them by name. We thus don’t make a distinction between games in the exhibition, and the art, that most of the time also can be played.

Everything is Political. The Politics of Gaming opened on the 21st of April and lasts till 18th of June 2017.

The exhibition includes work by Josh Millard, Alex Hovet, Pippin Barr, Grayson Earle, Marieke Verbiesen, Arno Coenen, Jasper Terra, Joseph DeLappe and The Biome Collective, Gordon Calleja, Escape from Woomera Collective, Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn (Tale of Tales).

In the exhibition the games could be played.

As part of this project we did organise a 24-hour-political-game- jam in collaboration with Mediacollege Amsterdam on the 23rd and 24th of May. Two groups of 8 students developed a game. The jam started on tuesday 12.00h and ended on wednesday 12.00h, after which the games were presented in the exhibition space and actually became part of the exhibition.
Besides the gamejam, youngsters from Youthcentre Flinty’s came by for a tour in the exhibition and to play the games.