GAME ARTS INTERNATIONAL ASSEMBLY
UPCOMING EDITIONS
GAIA 2025 - September/October - BARCELONA - Apply here
The Game Arts International Assembly (GAIA) is an international think tank and network for the professional development of the game arts community: aimed at curators, producers, event organizers and academics working in the field of videogame culture.
GAIA addresses topics such as: curation, art and videogames, activism, communication, language, communities, minorities, funding, networks, archiving and many more.
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GAIA provides its participants and partners with:
- Access to a network of international curators, producers, and community builders from a wide range of cultural backgrounds
- Opportunities to discover and connect with avant-garde artistic expressions from around the world
- Platform for generating cross-cultural schemes and transnational projects
- Multicultural and diverse perspectives
- A safe and open space for professional development, based on sharing successes, failures, and practical learnings
GAIA Community Projects
PREVIOUS EDITIONS
GAIA 2024
Online
- 33 speakers from 19 different countries
- over 10 sessions through 2 days
- over 100 people signing up
- discussions spanned a wide range of topics: sensory experiences beyond the screen, bringing the IRL experience into the digital realm, building and maintaining healthy & motivated communities over time, playful, interactive sessions and an ArtGames Showcase, among much more
- shared resources included Feelstorming workbook by Heather Kelley, Curating Indigenous Games guide by Hexe Fey & a collaborative a info sheet about ND related resources by Len Roed
- Videos & Recap of GAIA 2024
GAIA 2023
Toronto, Canada
- 22 game curators and community organizers hailing from 10 different countries
- 14 sessions plus field trips
- In connection with Toronto Games Week
- We launched a mentorship program connecting festival organizers and curators with game creators
- Sessions included: "The scene report", "new structures", "games in public spaces", and "what's your biggest challenge", among others
- Recap of GAIA 2023
GAIA 2021
Online
- 36 speakers from 21 countries
- 8 sessions during April-May
- Over 18 hours of programming
- Over 300 participants
- Sessions included: "Now you are playing with power, outlaw and activist game curation", "handmade game scenes", and "boss fight: how do we combat the dominance of the English language in our arts practice?" among others
- Recap of GAIA 2021
GAIA 2019
Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 25 participants from 12 countries
- 3 day in-person event
- 16 sessions
- In connection with Game on! El arte en juego Festival
- Sessions included: "10 years Curating and documenting playful culture around the world", "sustainability and revenue streams", and "where do we go wrong?: establishing shared values and standards in games cultural work" among others
- Recap of GAIA 2019
Programmers
María Luján Oulton is a games curator, cultural producer and lecturer with a Master Degree in Communication and Cultural Creation by Walter Benjamin Foundation. Luján is co-founder of the cultural producer Objeto a, focused on art and technology.
Among diverse exhibitions and new media art projects she created and produced Game on! El arte en juego an artgames and playful media exhibit that ran in Argentina for over a decade. In 2019 she co-founded GAIA (Game Arts International Assembly) with Jim Munroe (Canada) Lujan is also co-editor of the Game Studies Journal at Universidad de Palermo (Argentina), member of the GameStudies group at IIEAC (Instituto de Investigación y Experimentación en Arte y Crítica) and cofounder of Women in Games Argentina.
Marie LeBlanc Flanagan is an artist working in the playful spaces between people, especially related to connection and community. Marie builds experimental video games, playful installations, and cooperative experiences.
Marie has an enduring fondness for the infinite possibilities of trash. Marie founded Wyrd Arts Initiatives (a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to encouraging, documenting, and connecting creative expression across Canada), A Kind of Play (workshops on making experimental games), Drone Day (an annual international celebration of drone music communities) and co-founded Imaginary Residency (an artist-run online residency).
Jim Munroe is a “pop culture provocateur” according to the Austin Chronicle. His graphic novels and prose novels have been praised by Pulitzer-winner Junot Diaz and comics legend Neil Gaiman, and his lo-fi sci-fi feature films by Wired and the Guardian.
His political videogames have appeared at Sundance and Cannes, and he co-founded the world’s first videogame arts organization. He was an Art Gallery of Ontario Artist-in-Residence in 2014 and he lives in the Junction neighbourhood in Toronto. He now runs the Game Arts International Network, a not-for-profit that interconnects international game arts curators, festival organizers and other game community organizers.
Shalev Moran is a designer and artist based in Copenhagen. He currently works as a game designer and director at Bird Island, and co-runs the political-sci-fi project Speculative Tourism.
Previously he was the games curator at Print Screen Festival, a lecturer at Shenkar College’s Game Center, and a game designer at various companies. He received his B.A. from TAU's Honors Program in the Humanities and Arts, and his M.A. in Game Design from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.PREVIOUS PARTNERS
CONTACT
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