Computer Grrrls exhibition game area

A selection of games from the Computer Grrrls exhibition, dedicated to the place of women in technology and organized by curator Marie Lechner.

In the 80s, when video games were becoming popular, girls weren't considered as potential gamers. Today, there are as many female gamers as male gamers in France. On the other hand, in game production, women still only account for 14% of studio staff. This may explain why, among AAA (video game blockbusters), female characters are, with a few exceptions, clichés or stereotypes.

Through this selection, which is just a drop in the ocean of works that emerge every day, I've tried to make accessible a sample of subjects and representations related to the place of women in video games. It's well established that a woman's identity doesn't stop at her gender and biological sex. A woman is not THE woman; the cultural and social subjects and contexts surrounding her are multiple and shape a multitude of identities and stories. That's why I wanted to create an intersectional feminist selection. The aim is both to bring out complex, situated female figures and to do justice to all those who have been relegated to the background, objectified, sexualized, exoticized or used as a foil for male heroes, as Anita Sarkeesian also analyzes in her series of YouTube videos Tropes vs. Women in Video Games.

By playing these games, you'll be able to deconstruct and appropriate the status of perfect woman by gesticulating in front of a Kinect with Lea Schönfelder, tackle the question of mental load by embodying a housewife too often invisibilized with the Deconstructeam studio, discover the difficulty of express make-up with Jenny Jiao Hsia, approach pleasure from the angle of a flowery toboggan with the Tale of Tales studio, get rid of untimely hands that want to touch your hair at all costs with Momo Pixel, play Thelma and Louise GTA style with Marlowe Dobbe and Jane Friedhoff and much more.

This selection mainly features independent games, i.e. games produced by small studios or by independent developers. The emergence of the independent scene has enabled a number of artists and developers to make a name for themselves in the industry, breathing new life into videogame creation. Zoë Quinn's Depression Quest and Anna Anthropy's Dys4ia, for example, have become key creations in the feminist and queer video game community.

Selection du 13 mars au 31 avril 2019 ︎