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Choose Your Own Adventure

FACT invites you to Choose Your Own Adventure, a day-long symposium that delves into how games offer unique approaches to world-building, agency and collective experience.

Marking the closing weekend of Art Plays Games, an exhibition of games created by artists and independent developers, we’ll consider the implications of encouraging audience agency within artworks and how artists rethink control, gamification, and decision-making processes.

FACT Liverpool
88 Wood Street
L1 4DQ

Studio/Lab

Bookings

Babeworld Character Creation Workshop — Free

Conversations & Performances — Free

Evening Performances — Free

This symposium brings together a diverse group of artists, performers, game designers, critical thinkers, and industry professionals to explore the compelling storytelling potential of games. Players include Babeworld, Babak Ahteshamipour, David Blandy, Jeremy Chen, Aleena Chia, Marijam Didžgalvytė, Anne Duffau, Jon Edgley, Zein Majali and Jazmin Morris.

While the gaming industry's revenue and reach surpass other entertainment sectors, its capacity for experimentation and play – both competitive and imaginative – remains immeasurable. Discussions will also address issues of diversity and inclusion in avatar representation, exploring what the industry can learn from the arts.

Working in collaboration with cultural producer Anne Duffau, the symposium includes the forthcoming edition of Always Coming Home, a series of events by curatorial platform A—Z that further the ideas of immersion, speculative worlds and conscious listening. Previous iterations have been held at Iklectik (2023) and Matt’s Gallery (2024).

This symposium is suitable for 18+ and takes place in Studio/Lab, our dedicated space for creative experimentation that nurtures a vibrant community of artists, researchers, and technologists.

Tickets

Tickets for Choose Your Own Adventure are free. 

To offer flexibility, the day is split into three sessions. Attendees are welcome to join for all or part of the day. Please book here

Babeworld and John Edgley

Courtesy of the artists: Babeworld (left) and John Edgley (right)

Session 0: Character Creation

Workshop

11:00 - 12:30

Led by art collective Babeworld, you’ll use tabletop role-playing game mechanics to create unique characters. Whether you’re a seasoned Dungeons and Dragons adventurer or want to dip your toes into a fantasy world, take part in this playful workshop to create your own character. Liverpool-based artist and graphic designer Jon Edgley joins us to transform your character into an illustration for you to take home. 

This hands-on workshop is limited to 15 people. Please book your place for this workshop separately from the symposium.

Babeworld are an art collective based across Stoke-on-Trent and London. Babeworld’s work entangles popular-culture-inspired film, installation and sound design to interrogate themes of political and societal identity, disability, access, neurodivergence, sex work and race. Babeworld's research explores what it means to make, participate in and spectate art as marginalised individuals.

Jon Edgley is a Liverpool-based artist and graphic designer. Jon’s practice consists of drawing, curation and performance. His practice explores his existence, class and position as a minimum wage worker, artist, curator, and any other role required from them in their daily life.

David and Jazmin

Courtesy of the artists: David Blandy (left) and Jazmin Morris (right)

Rerendering and Reflecting Reality

Conversation

13:00 - 14:00

Artists David Blandy and Jazmin Morris come together for an in-conversation to discuss decision-making, agency, representation, worldbuilding, and character and story design.

Ahead of the conversation, watch a short film by interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer and musician Babak Ahteshamipour.

Jazmin Morris is a Creative Computing Artist and Educator based in Leeds. Her practice considers the historical trajectories of modern technology and critically speculates on the landscape of human-computer interaction.

David Blandy is an artist examining global structures of control and networks of resistance, in areas as diverse as ecology, history, science and arenas of play. He makes videos, games, sound and ephemera, deconstructing forms to put them back together again.

Babak Ahteshamipour is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in mining and materials science engineering. His practice is based on the collision of the virtual vs the actual, aimed at correlating topics from cyberspace to ecology and politics to identity, exploring them via gaming and online subcultures with a focus on themes of coexistence and simultaneity.

Aleena and Marijam

Courtesy of Aleena Chia (left), photographed by Jenni Toivonen, and Marijam Didžgalvytė (right)

Everything to Play For: Politics, Labour, and Community in Gaming

Conversation

14:45 - 15:45

Lecturer in Game and Media Studies Aleena Chia and games industry critic Marijam Didžgalvytė discuss politics, labour, and community within the gaming landscape.

Aleena Chia is a lecturer in Game Studies and Media Studies based at Goldsmiths, University of London. She researches videogame-making cultures and digital wellness practices to understand how media technologies automate work and optimise life–shaping inequalities in creative industries. Her research on video games examines game engines and digital labour and is published in journals such as Convergence, Internet Policy Review, Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Marijam Didzgalvytė is a Lithuanian-Tatar games industry critic dissecting the intersection between video games and IRL politics. Her work has been published by the Guardian, VICE, GamesIndustry.biz, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung and others. She is currently a Senior Marketing Executive at a Bafta-winning videogames studio and is the author of Everything To Play For: How Videogames Are Changing The World.

BABEWORLD FACT PERFORMANCE PROMO PIC

Babeworld, courtesy of the artist

Roll For Initiative 

Performance

16:00 - 17:00

Round off the afternoon with a confessional-style performance from art collective Babeworld. This performance aims to capture the vibe of a smoking area at closing time outside of the gay bar. In Roll for Initiative, Babeworld explores what it means to be a performer who is too scared to perform. This piece will explore how they use Dungeons and Dragons-inspired tabletop role-playing game mechanics to develop the perfect skills to deal with a chaotic life, social anxiety and the pressure to perform. If you're not sure about attending, maybe roll the dice.

Plenary Session

Discussion

18:00 - 19:15

Chat about your thoughts, learnings and reflections of the day as we examine world-building and the theme of choosing your own adventure or reality.

Zein and Jeremy

Courtesy of the artists: Zein Majali (left), photography by Johann Spindler, and Jeremy Chen (right)

FLAY Musical Performance & The Subliminal Kids Soundscape

Performances

19:30 - 20:30

To conclude the day, we are thrilled to present two performances from visual and sound artists Zein Majali and Jeremy Chen, as well as cultural producer and A—Z founder Anne Duffau.

Zein and Jeremy present FLAY, an audio-visual performance of found and generated footage which they describe as “kill streak theatre open world karaoke clickbait expressionism dance dance revolution Mario Kart jazz”. This not-to-be-missed performance is accompanied by a live score by Zein & Jeremy. 

A—Z presents The Subliminal Kids, a meditative soundscape that sets the scene with a new species as a hacker of reality; they manipulate language, perception, and control systems parasitically. The Subliminal Kids is a reflective trip to an expansive world, space, sphere, and to other realms. 

Zein Majali is a sound and visual artist whose work explores the collision of technology with a rapidly evolving political landscape, with a particular interest in a post-colonial and globalised Middle East. Her recent performance work has been presented at the V&A, Somerset House, and the ICA.

Jeremy Chen is a Hawaiian-born, Hong Kong-Chinese artist and musician based in London, working primarily in sound, installation, moving image, and performance. His work explores dissociative states, digital technologies, masculine identities, as well as the intersection between brain rot and Buddhism.

Anne Duffau is a cultural producer, researcher, and founder of A—Z, an exploratory/nomadic curatorial platform. A—Z aims to open up to audiences by sharing discursive practices in order to challenge preconceived ideas about race, gender identities and so-called history in terms of power relationships. Her ongoing event series, Always Coming Home, researches the effect of visual and sound in narrative, named after the 1985 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, where the reader follows a cultural group who live in the distant future long after modern society has collapsed.

Accessibility

We are committed to providing accessible experiences. 

This symposium takes place at FACT Liverpool, 88 Wood Street, L1 4DQ.

Google Maps

Level access pavement to FACT is available on Wood Street and there is ramp access on Fleet Street. All areas inside our building - including screens and galleries - are accessible to visitors with limited mobility, including wheelchair users. There is also a lift that serves all floors in the main foyer next to the Box Office. We have accessible toilets on all floors of the building. Disabled parking spaces can be found close by on Wood Street and Fleet Street. 

This symposium takes place on the third floor which is accessible by lift only. We have a friendly team of staff that can support you with navigating around the building, and answer any questions you have on the day. If you would like to speak to us before the event, please email info@fact.co.uk or call us on 0151 707 4444 between 11:00 - 18:00, Wednesday to Sunday.

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