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BRIEFS - Experimental Games
Opening:
Friday, May 29, 2026, 7:00 PM
Exhibition Dates:
May 30–31, 2026, 12:00 PM–7:00 PM
Medienwerkstatt Wien, Neubaugasse 40a, 1070 Vienna
The exhibition “BRIEFS - Experimental Games” presents the work of international artists who responded to the open call for the “Briefs” project by the Salzburger Kunstverein Gold Extra. Across four stations, visitors can experience absurd, abstract, funny, exciting, annoying, thought-provoking, and poetic micro-games in digital format.
The exhibition is part of this year’s Independent Space Index Festival.
This presentation of digital formats is interspersed with remnants of the analog game jam that took place in the space prior to the exhibition. Game development in its rawest form meets its digital end result. A glimpse into the thought processes and brainstorming of developers... An immersion in the finished products.
BRIEFS is a micro-publishing initiative curated by Georg Hobmeier and Evgeni Puzankov and produced by the Salzburg-based collective gold extra. Since 2022, annual grants have been awarded for compact, digital games. Beyond triple-A budgets and target audience optimization, this initiative fosters unusual, playful works of art that would not typically thrive in the commercial mainstream of the gaming medium.
The themes change every year: the absurd, pigs, death, and cheese. This is the starting point for concept and implementation. What you do with it is entirely up to you. The main thing is that it’s digital and playable.
Featuring works by:
2025 – Cheese
Medienzentrale
Phoebii
Kate Bagenzo
2024 – Death
Fantastic Humans
Dobra Studios
Soph Podestá & Kâmîare ArtGames
Studio Lichene
2023 – Pigs
Spiders
Hatimb
Cuatro Assets
2022 – The Absurd
Yeris
Damien Crawford
Max Robins
Laughing Pineapple
Stuffed Wombat
All Worms
Analogue Gamejam
Friday, May 29, 2026, 7:00 PM
On May 29, Ben Wahl will lead an analog game design workshop in collaboration with the Experimental Game Cultures program. Students will set aside all digital tools and attempt to bring their ideas to life using only the analog resources at their disposal. From acting to scraps of paper, they will explore new tools and incorporate them into the development of their own games.
The results of the workshop will be on display for visitors to view and experience during the exhibition.
gold extra
games - theater - digital art – artistic research
gold extra is a group of artists working at the intersection of games, digital art, theater, film, and visual art. They explore the development of new formats, such as documentary video games and robotic theater, and examine games as platforms for communicating socio-political issues. The idea creates the format—for gold extra’s artistic work, the constant search for innovative forms of artistic expression is a central task.
Georg Hobmeier
Studied acting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and choreography and new media at the School of New Dance Development in Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2012, he worked as a performer, choreographer, and dramaturg at the intersection of theater, dance, media, and public space. In addition to stage productions, his work includes interactive media installations, computer games, anti-disciplinary laboratories, and works in urban spaces.
He has been intensively involved in artistic computer games since 2005, including Frontiers and From Darkness. In 2014, he founded the company Causa Creations for the commercial development of games and XR applications. In 2017, he produced Path Out, a game that received worldwide acclaim and won numerous awards. In 2018, he developed the dystopian game theater installation Vienna - All Tomorrows at the Vienna Volkstheater. In 2021, he created the game Gates of Aleppo, which was shown at festivals such as Amazefest Berlin and the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. Since 2022, he has been curating a series of short game publications called Briefs.
He has taught at the Nuremberg Academy of Fine Arts, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, and held a visiting professorship at the Royal Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. He currently teaches game design at the University of Applied Sciences Vienna (FH Wien BFI) and the University of Applied Sciences Vienna (FH Wien WKO).
Evgeni Puzankov
Evgeni “Zhenia” Puzankov is an award-winning narrative designer and game developer (under the name All Worms) with over 17 years of industry experience and more than 70 published titles. He is also a lecturer, curator of the “Briefs” microfinance fund, and a doctoral candidate at York University.
