Visit goodjob.zone/ for the full catalogue of the Arcade.
The Good Job Team consists of Alia Shahab, Danny Luong, Jack Michielsen, Jadda Tsui, Jessica Szeto, Joleen Toner, Jordan Baylon, Pan Priebe, and Vicki Chau, led by Teresa Tam.
Good Job Arcade is a Teresa Tam project that utilizes work and play to explore themes of asynchronicity experienced by some diaspora individuals and communities that form into nostalgia. This project is being developed in collaboration with 8 artists and writers with their own varying relationships to the sentiment of diaspora. Rather than using the conventional notion of nostalgia, the longing for a time when life was simpler, the project will be delving into a longing that is rooted in what a diaspora individual lost or never had. On one hand, those who briefly return to their familial home reminisce how they can barely recognize it: faces of people are unfamiliar, spaces reshaped, and how they can no longer see themselves being able to permanently return. On the other hand, some have only ever dreamed of places where their families have existed for generations, only to be shown that these places are imaginary, far removed physically and from reality. The Arcade is a space to navigate these nostalgic places that no longer exist or may have never existed at all. Games, in their algorithmic and recursive nature, can convey complex experiences in everyday life. Playing helps the individual to escape from the anxieties of life and into the reverie of familiarity and fantasy; momentary spaces away from every day where they can feel a sense of accomplishment and belonging.
Places the Arcade has visited:
TRUCK Contemporary Art: May 26th – July 15th, 2023
Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre: August 12th – October 1st, 2023
Art Gallery of Swift Current: January 24th – March 29th, 2025
Art Gallery of Alberta: March 8th – August 24th, 2025
