Play/Display: Symposium on Games, Museums and Curatorial Practice

In what ways, in what forms, and in what contexts are video games presented in museums and other exhibition spaces? How do curators and other stakeholders approach the digital, interactive, and unstable artifact that is the video game? In short: What happens when video games become exhibition objects?

The “Play/Display” symposium is dedicated to the cultural history of video game exhibitions in German-speaking countries. The focus is not on games or forms of gamification as educational formats in museums, but rather on video games as exhibition objects: Which video games are selected as exhibits, and what history or histories of video games do these curatorial selections tell? How are past and contemporary histories of video games situated within a cultural-historical context in special and permanent exhibitions—ranging from art museums to technology and local history museums to specialized museums? And what influence do these projects have on the social status of video games, and in what ways are they reflected in academic discourse? 

In addition to two major, long-running projects—the zkm_gameplay in Karlsruhe and the Computerspielemuseum in Berlin—the symposium will examine a series of special exhibitions on digital games.

This event is the kickoff symposium for the research project „Computerspiele(n) im Museum,“ which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Organization
Benjamin Beil (University of Cologne), Isabelle Hamm (University of Cologne), Laura C. Schmidt (ZKM)