Videogames create worlds. Often, those worlds mirror our own, reproducing certain ideals and values as norm through their narrative, game play, design, etc. This session begins with an invitation to the participants to critically consider those worlds, identifying the key points and elements through which specific videogames circulate political, cultural and social values. How do the games we play every day vehiculate ideology? Using this knowledge, participants are then invited to intervene upon these videogame worlds through the writing, drawing, collaging, etc. of fan fictions, using the original text to re-construct these worlds or reveal crucial aspects they might be hiding in plain sight. At the end of the session, participants will have begun to create a narrative with their interventions upon these universes and the results may be as diverse as creative writing, the generation of new games in the form of text-based adventures, comics, mini-graphic novels, etc.

Requirements: Please choose a videogame you know well ahead of the session. To participate please send an email to tag.coordinator@concordia.ca with the subject line ‘Fanfiction Creative Writing Workshop.’

Lídia Pereira (PT) studied at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (MA Media Design and Communication) and at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (BA Communication Design). Her practice bridges the fields of graphic design, art, digital media and infrastructure, critical theory, and publishing. In 2015, she founded the Pervasive Labour Union zine, a semi-regular publication in which contributors reflect on topics relating to labour on corporate social networks, algorithmic governance, and alternative digital infrastructures. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at the PhDArts programme, a collaboration between the Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where she is investigating videogames in the context of art education as a site of struggle against hegemonic discourse.