Minjun Shin



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Artistic Chronicles(for 3–4 players)  

2022/2023
Board game creation, gameplay, and workshop
Estiamted playing time 60’
















Art Chronicles (for 3–4 Players) is a board game modeled on the structural dynamics of the Korean art world. Players take on the roles of artist, curator, or administrator, and must complete a single art project before the end of a “year” (twelve turns). On each turn, players make choices according to their situation.

Each role embodies characteristics drawn from reality, shaping the decisions players make. Initial financial resources are determined at the start of the game by a “spoon draw” (a play on the Korean expression for being born with a gold or dirt spoon). If one’s resources are depleted, the game ends immediately. Thus, artists and curators must constantly decide whether to take part-time jobs to earn money or to pursue “artistic work” such as research or creation. Administrators, who receive financial resources each turn, cannot win alone: victory conditions require securing funding and sufficient project resources to succeed collectively. Hence the best choice in each turn becomes cooperation toward a shared project.

Starting financial resources range from 1–20 depending on dice rolls. Since part-time jobs provide only 1–3 resources per turn, the gap between beginning with 1 and 20 amounts to nearly half the twelve turns. From the outset, players face structural advantages or disadvantages that are nearly impossible to overcome by effort alone.

Another key element is the event cards, revealed each turn, which symbolize social events affecting the arts world. Positive effects include “increased cultural budgets” or “amendments to the Artists’ Rights Act / Employment Insurance Act / Subsidy Act.” Negative effects include “blacklists,” “epidemics,” “social disasters,” “malicious audits by lawmakers,” or “bureaucratic appointments of cultural institution heads.”

The system cards, representing cultural policies, have effects that last until the end of the game. They might increase advantages, counter negative events (e.g. Artists’ Rights Act), prevent bankruptcy from halting play (Employment Insurance Act), remove grant conditions (Subsidy Act), or reduce administrative workload (Governance Activation).

While the game’s nominal victory condition is to complete an art project, in reality the preconditions of that project are shaped by event and system cards.

The game also borrows the imaginative mechanisms of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), the early 1970s tabletop RPG. In Art Chronicles, players collect research cards containing keywords like body, climate, action, and language, etc which become conditions for acquiring project funding, and media cards such as installation, video, performance, or writing, which together form the final project. To win, players must present and explain the final project by combining their cards. As a result, by the end of play, the group produces at least a rough draft of a project proposal—if not a fully realized work.

Through this combination of mechanisms, the game metaphorically represents the structures of the Korean art world, while functioning as a tool to simulate new forms of collaboration and collective projects.


Note
The Artistic Series is drawn from my life as both an artist and activist—identities that have fused unevenly over time. It is an ongoing series to which I remain deeply attached, continually developing through new works.

In the past, I felt pressured to abandon activism and choose art. After a major turning point in my life, I came to see both artist and activist as essential identities. The question became how these dual positions might combine to create a new hybrid identity in the present, and what unique practices and works I alone could bring forth.

The Artistic Series takes the form of algorithms or frameworks that are not “artistic” in themselves, but which reveal the lives, processes, and concerns behind art and the art world, offering a chance to critically examine its structures.

Earlier works in the series, though dear to me, relied on closed systems—like algorithms—that implied an inability to change the structures themselves, echoing critiques of structuralism. While working on networking projects with other artists, I found new possibilities in experimental conversation card games. Card decks provide fixed rules, yet the play itself generates endless variations. From this I drew inspiration to create a board game where players’ actions can reshape the rules.

Collarboration
  • Project Collaboration: Mikyo Kim
  • Component Design: pa-i-ka
  • Board Game Advising: Changhwan Yoon (Popuri Board Game Company), Yeonmin Jung (Mandoo Games)