69 JOLASEAN

Jolasean
(Video)games
in contemporary
culture

In autumn 2011, the Arteleku Tabakalera Creation Centre organised the seminars Jolasean. (Video)games in contemporary
culture.

Videogames are an area of culture that in recent years has experienced spectacular development, and which is currently considered one of the fundamental cores of contemporary
culture, both from the perspective of cultural consumption, technological experimentation and aesthetics, and from the perspective of cultural industries. For these reasons, we
decided to organise seminars to allow us to approach this constantly evolving field in order to get a better understanding of the importance that games and videogames have and will have in the future of contemporary culture.

These seminars included the participation of Basque, Spanish and international experts. With these lines we wish to show our sincere appreciation, both for having accompanied us on the days the seminars were held and for including your contributions in this publication. Indeed, this publication aims in some way to be a testimony of what happened at the seminars Jolasean. (Video)games in contemporary culture, and therefore, both the content, the structure and order of the texts correspond to the seminar programme.

Jolasean. (Video)games in contemporary culture was structured around two types of activity. On one hand, a series of theoretical seminars aimed at delving deeper into different aspects related to the world of games and videogames: the place occupied by videogames in libraries, games as a platform for education and learning, as a space for experimentation, critical and creative activity and their relation to audio-visual narratives. On the other hand, we wanted to offer the opportunity for a more practical approach to the field of videogames by organising three workshops: Playlab2, an experimental laboratory held throughout three weeks to create a game or videogame using the financial crisis as a starting point; a videogame workshop aimed at fathers/mothers and children organised in collaboration with the Durango Fair; and finally, a seminar that aimed to reach the very core of videogames, the philosophical and moral readings that many of these projects hide, showing this cultural field as a perfectly valid tool to reflect on the contemporary world.

A website was created in relation to these seminars www.jolasean.eu; where you can find all the information on the event. The meetings and workshops were also recorded and you can find these documents on the Tabakalera channel on Vimeo www.vimeo.com/tabakalera.