Sociologist Malcolm Gladwell says that championship in any area requires training of at least 10,000 hours.
You have to think of the millennials right away. What else could have become of them! But they gambled quite a bit. The latest exhibition in the State Museum, Games, is likely to be attractive to many 20- to 40-year-olds. Between pomp oven and Hodler ham, they can restart the old vices of adolescence.
The exhibition organizers have turned the museum into a play booth: Games from the 70s to the present are ready to play. So let’s go to the arcade boxes that are known from the dimly colored stains of the early 90s. In «Rampage» you have to defend King-Kong, Godzilla and the werewolf with a joystick. It’s a massacre: A soldier scurries up with dynamite, now they’re even coming in a helicopter, and King-Kong is already falling off the skyscraper.
Completely ambitious
And it goes on: “Counter Strike”, classic shooter of the year 2000. Rushing in narrow passages, changing weapons. Where’s the hostage, where’s the damn hostage ?! “Terrorists win.” Finally, put on the virtual reality glasses and put them into the world of “Tilt Brush”. This is a game in which you can paint huge paintings on an imaginary wall. Fascinating.
If you object that “interactivity” is quite okay as a medium-new museum trend and that fun is not a bad thing in itself, but something is missing – well, you are right. The exhibition in the State Museum is completely ambitious. For comparison: if one were to contest an exhibition about Goethe with a complete Goethe edition in which the visitors could leaf through, it would of course seem too scanty.
We see exactly this curatorial self-task at «Games»: Apart from a few thin lines on the respective era, for example on the first-person shooter discussion, the exhibition gives nothing to think about. No deeper thoughts on the game as an art form, on the sophisticated psychology of mobile games or on the interaction of game and everyday life, as we are currently experiencing with the game «Fortnite». Instead, there are consoles and headsets and a stubborn chronology that can also be found on Wikipedia. Conclusion: got stuck at level 1. Try again, Landesmuseum!
«Games», from January 17th, State Museum Zurich
Created: 1/16/2020, 6:54 AM
–
