An Interview With SEQUENCEBREAK// Curator Nilson Carroll

SEQUENCEBREAK// is an in-person exhibit of "artist's games," showing until June 28, 2025 at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York. It includes work by Stephen Gillmurphy (thecatamites, the developer of Anthology of the Killer, TIER's issue this month), Nathalie Lawhead, Philip Mallory Jones, Cassie McQuater, and Heart Street (Yuxin Gao, Lillyan Ling, Gus Boehling, and John Bruneau) In a broad way, the exhibition's ethos is aligned with TIER's mission: An emphasis on the weird, arty, and alternative, a blend of the physical and digital, and an emphasis on games as time machines and connective issue. So when Phoenix and I got the chance to interview curator Nilson Caroll, we got excited. What follows are Caroll's answer to the questions we emailed in. You can find out more about the exhibit and the games featured, read supplementary material, and watch recorded events here.

TIER: Each of the exhibit’s artworks have different control schemes, how do you best present them in an in-person space? What modes of presentation would you advise against?

Carroll: Folks who come into the exhibition have such different relationships with technology and with games. People who have strong relationships with games immediately know how to hold a game controller, or how to use WASD, but you can’t make too many assumptions about the larger audience. We have control information with each game description, but it ends up being helpful to just have curators or staff present in the space, and willing to give demonstrations about how the games work.

Visitors often feel like they can’t play the games, or they’re worried they’ll “lose,” or not be good enough to play. It’s a huge hurdle to overcome, both for them and for us. I could imagine an artists’ game exhibition, for instance, with the title of the show being something like “Games You Can’t Die In.” But over time, audiences figure it out, and even start to enjoy it. We’ve done several one or two night pop-up arcades here at Visual Studies Workshop, but SEQUENCEBREAK// is our first long term artists’ games exhibition. It’s nice to allow people to drop by for a bit, and then visit again later on to play more.

TIER: Can an exhibition like this feel coherent? Or is that against the point?

Carrol: I curated the exhibition not around a specific theme or as a historical survey of artists’ games but as a grouping of artists working with games in interesting ways. With my curatorial practice, I try to resist the ideas of canonization and hierarchy, or the idea of creating a permanent art history.

Folks generally find one or two games in the exhibition that they’re naturally attracted to and spend more time with. Each of the games looks and plays very differently, and holds different kinds of surprises. No one experiences SEQUENCEBREAK// the same way.

TIER: According to your foreword essay for the exhibition, it sounds like you are hoping to create more possibilities for there to be third spaces for game makers and artists. How do you feel like SEQUENCEBREAK// has accomplished that goal? Are there any lessons you would take going forward?

Carrol: In our wider culture, there is a huge lack of spaces to make art together, hang out, and discuss ideas. Visual Studies Workshop has a long history of providing this type of multi-use space for artists and thinkers and my hope is that SEQUENCEBREAK// serves as a conversation starter with both folks from arts communities and games communities. Aspiring game devs visit and want to talk about their hopes and dreams, or artists want to ask about how the games were made, for instance. It feels very much like the beginning of a larger conversation, figuring out who is in the community and what their needs or wants are (and how to meet those needs). Almost everyone I talk to has one thing in common: they yearn for connection, collaboration, and support. Fostering a healthy ecosystem is hard, period, but, like I wrote in the foreword, it feels necessary to push for more IRL/AFK game arts events. Get out and meet new people, see what others are working on.

TIER: How do you pitch an exhibition like this to more traditional funding/arts orgs? What challenges or opportunities does that represent? Most video game spaces, even arty spaces, are online. What is the interplay between an in-person exhibition and digital work that anyone can access from anywhere? How have Twitch streams and other events factored into that?

Carrol: In terms of describing the exhibition for funding purposes, it’s important to me not to hide the fact that we’re talking about games. There’s art language that could be used to avoid the word “games” – I’m thinking about “new media” – but the fact that these are “artists’ games” is the point. A lot of funding that supports video games treats games as a commodity, a commercial product or investment. I hope for more opportunities for games artists in the future. I think a lot about alternative ways to support artists making games that are outside the bounds of trying to sell games on Steam, for instance.

For the second part of your question, something that I often take for granted is the fact that folks that are not in the small games space aren’t familiar with tools like Twine or Bitsy or platforms like itch.io. The fact that someone can just come in off the street and learn about a whole other way of thinking around games and game-making is wild, powerful. We did an artist talk with Nathalie Lawhead and afterward folks in the audience were so invigorated and wanted to stay and ask questions and talk about ideas. It was really cool.

I’m curious how we break down these lines between artist and audience, maker and player, professional and hobbyist. It’s complex. From every angle, there are folks who feel like something is not for them – that art in a gallery is too “valuable” or off-limits, or that making games requires an expensive degree in computer science.

Time Machine: Bronzeville and Out for Delivery both have a documentary element (of a sort). In what ways can a video game be “non-fiction?” How does this interface with the other artworks in the exhibition?

Carrol: In general, there is still a lingering assumption that video games are about fantasy and escapism, or that there is a clear boundary between “serious” games and all other types of games. This is a bit of a false binary, and coming from an arts and poetry background, I have a deep appreciation for games that cross these boundaries, vulnerable games, political games.

Heart Street describes Out for Delivery as an interactive documentary, for instance. I showed the game at an event for local university students in promotion for the exhibition, and a lot of the students would ask me “how is this a video game?” And then they would start playing it, and swivel the camera around and notice small details. Out for Delivery works in contrast to traditional documentaries because it isn’t bound to the single point-of-view of the camera. You can even see the maker if you turn the camera all the way inward.

Time Machine Bronzeville operates in a more open-ended way, sort of functioning like a museum where we can explore at our own pace. One of the things that I appreciate about the game is that it eschews a lot of what we might normally consider games to be like – fast, violent, and winnable. Philip Mallory Jones works to honor this important, historical neighborhood and through this process, creates a space where real people’s lives matter.

I would also say that even though the other games in SEQUENCEBREAK// aren’t explicitly non-fiction, through the unique visions of their creators, do operate through varying levels of autobiography, politics, and social commentary.

TIER: Everest Pipkin’s essay in the catalog discusses the chain that links a “Spacewar” emulator to its original tape-program. How is the tech and content of this exhibition tied into past ones?

Carrol: With Everest’s essay, there’s this glimpse into an optimism about technology, that it’s not inherently oppressive, that it can be a tool for expression for anyone. This becomes hard to imagine in our algorithm driven, AI-fueled capitalist nightmare world, but it’s important to keep in mind this history of artists and creators developing technologies for good.

With each of the games in the show, and with our programs with the artists, I like to highlight accessible tools and point folks toward where they can learn about them. It’s not specific to a certain technology necessarily, but to an ethos around how we think about technology. My favorite part about the Spacewar! (1962) story that Everest brings up is that its original creators couldn’t finish the project because the computer didn’t feature the trigonometric function they needed. Later on, they learned that a lab a few cities over had the program, and drove out to go get it. I love the physicality of this story, the fact that they have to travel to pick up a tape with code on it, and this peer-to-peer sharing.

Something I often think about is this parallel between the history of experimental video art and the rise of small games. In each story, there is an emphasis on artists building tools for artists, shareware values. When an artist engages with game-making tools, whether it's Twine, or Phaser, or Godot, they’re plugging into this history of liberation through art and tech. This feels more important now than ever to keep in mind.