1st FEBRUARY- 1st JULY 2024
SEAGER is excited to announce Matchmaking, a four-part exhibition series exploring how and why artists make work with and about video games.
The series of exhibitions will include artists who are inspired by and work within video game worlds, exploring a range of diverse ideas from the architecture of game spaces to violence, war and politics in the digital realm. The shows will include paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, films, playable experiences and in-game performances.
Each exhibition in the series will be accompanied by a reading list of books that inspired the ideas behind the exhibition, as well as a number of books selected by the exhibiting artists that inform their practice, available to read within the gallery space and listed at the bottom of the page.
Curator Bob Bicknell-Knight.
The dates and details of each exhibition in the series can be seen below:
Opening Wednesday 31st January 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Open 1st February - 2nd March 2024
Opening Wednesday 13th March 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Open 14th March - 13th April 2024
Opening Wednesday 17th April 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Open 18th April - 18th May 2024
Opening Wednesday 29th May 2024, 6 – 9 pm
Open 30th May - 1st July 2024
IMAGE ABOVE: Alice Bucknell (@alicebucknell), The Alluvials (Chapter 1: California pilled), 2023 (still). 4k single-channel video, 6 min 20 sec. Courtesy of the artist
Matchmaking Ongoing Reading List
From Out Of Bounds
Never Alone: Video Games as Interactive Design by Anna Burckhardt, Paola Antonelli, and Paul Galloway, 2022 (recommend by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
An Attempt At Exhausting a Place in GTA Online by Jamie Sutcliffe and Michael Crowe, 2017 (recommend by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Gamescenes: Art in the Age of Videogames by Matteo Bittanti and Domenico Quaranta, 2006 (recommend by Aram Bartholl)
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, 2022 (recommend by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Playing Nature: Ecology in Video Games by Alenda Y. Chang, 2019 (recommend by Alice Bucknell)
Atmospheres: Architectural Environments. Surrounding Objects by Peter Zumthor, 2006 (recommend by Mario Mu)
HR Giger. 40th Ed by Andreas J. Hirsch, 2021 (recommend by Rosa-Maria Nuutinen)
The World Is Born From Zero by Cameron Kunzelman, 2022 (recommend by Everest Pipkin)
A Thousand Machines by Gerald Raunig, 2010 (recommend by Amba Sayal-Bennett)
A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen by Martin Gayford and David Hockney, 2016 (recommend by Mathew Zefeldt)
From Character Creator
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, 2022 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, 2021 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Fake Accounts by Lauren Oyler, 2021 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Things I Learned from Mario's Butt by Laura Kate Dale, 2021 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Videogame Atlas: Mapping Interactive Worlds by Luke Caspar Pearson and Sandra Youkhana, 2022 (recommended by Jamie Janković)
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington by Leonora Carrington, 2017 (recommended Cassie McQuater)
The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation by Thomas LaMarre, 2009 (recommended by Petra Szemán)
Animatic Apparatus, The: Animation, Vitality, and the Futures of the Image by Deborah Levitt, 2018 (recommended by Petra Szemán)
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1988 (recommended by Willem Weismann)
In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan, 1968 (recommended by Willem Weismann)
Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins, 1992 (recommended by Stacia Yeapanis)
From Respawn
Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, 2018 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by Adrian Hon, 2022 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Screen Images: In-Game Photography, Screenshot, Screencast by Winfried Gerling, Sebastian Möring and Marco de Mutiis, 2023 (recommended by Roc Herms)
Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher, 2009 (recommended by Emily Mulenga and Total Refusal)
Disziplin: Soziologie und Geschichte militärischer Gehorsamsproduktion by Ulrich Bröckling, 1997 (recommended by Total Refusal – only available online here – bit.ly/Ulrich-Bröckling-TR)
The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss, 2008 (recommended by Léa Porré)
Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology by André Nusselder, 2009 (recommended by Georgie Roxby Smith)
Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell, 2022 (recommended by Angela Washko)
Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble, 2018 (recommended by Angela Washko)
From Asset Flip
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, 2023 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Everything You Ever Wanted by Luiza Sauma, 2019 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier, 2017 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry by Jason Schreier, 2021 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin, 2015 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
The Men by Sandra Newman, 2022 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Sex Robots & Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex & Death by Jenny Kleeman, 2020 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, 1953 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman, 2009 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, 1972 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Capital Is Dead: Is This Something Worse? by McKenzie Wark, 2019 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, 2020 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
All Art is Ecological by Timothy Morton, 2021 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn, 2020 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Bit Rot by Douglas Coupland, 2016 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener, 2020 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)
Beyond Lies The Wub: Volume One Of The Collected Stories by Philip K. Dick, 1999 (recommended by Bob Bicknell-Knight)