fun games
for the
contemporary
artist
disappearance of the author or hide and seek
reality game
hula hoop
opposites
blind tag
dead end game
smuggling
infinite tale game
gravity road or magnetic hill
snowball
hopscotch
text by ieva misevičiūtė
design goda budvytytė
printed with kees maas
© 2008 by ieva misevičiūtė
margins
hul a hoop
reality game
disappearance of the author into the audience ,
or hide and seek
In this game a player spins his/her ideas around him/
herself. For instance, by referring to his/her national,
personal, or cultural identity. The success of the game
depends on the length of the spinning routine the player
is able to perform. The game ends either by the player
dropping the Hula Hoop, or the audience falling asleep.
The aim of the game is to create a clear division between
fiction and reality. To win the game the artist must
convince the audience that his or her work has nothing
to do with reality. In certain variations of this game,
the player employs fiction in order to intervene, reshape,
remodel, or question reality. Some players may state
that they fictionalise reality, or use reality as their
material to produce fiction. However, in such cases the
player should refer to his or her work as fiction, and
the work should clearly demonstrate its distinctiveness
from reality.
To play the game an artist has to disappear into his/her
audience. The audience is then invited to search for
the author. Often the audience members find the author
within themselves. Then the game takes a turn and the
audience disappears into the name of the author.
At this point the game starts again: the author’s name
appears on the piece in which s/he is hiding within the
audience, and once the author is found in the audience,
the audience disappears into the author.
smuggling
dead end game
blind tag
An artist proposes an unsolvable problem or an
unanswerable question. The audience should then look
for an answer or solution. The less solvable the problem
posed, the more successful is the game. The purpose
of the game is to reach a dead end as quickly as possible.
It is a well known children’s game, usually played in
a dark room, where one player has to find hiding players
and touch them. In the artworld the game is played as
follows: an artist has to pretend that s/he is blindfolded
and search for the invisible players. Since the game is
played by one player at the time, the player is searching
for the invisible, the immaterial, or the unknown.
The game is played to prove that the invisible may be
seen, the immaterial materialised, and the unknown
discovered.
hopscotch
snowball
gravity road or magnetic hill
infinite tale game
A player moves erratically across the grid of time.
The game can be played alone or with a group of players.
The opponent in this game is time itself, thus the player
has to skip from place to place as quickly as possible,
moving randomly between the past, present and future.
Although in the original version of the game, the players
cannot touch the line between the squares, in the
artworld version this is precisely what the players
should do—hop from one place to another without
landing into the square of time, but suspending
themselves in-between. The player who makes time
slip is the winner.
An artist invites his/her audience to play the game.
Usually the game functions as a situation created by the
artist and continued by the spectators. The artist forms
a little snowball (a situation often called an invitation),
then the audience members roll the snowball. The aim
of the game is to turn passive spectators into active
participants. Thus the success of the game depends on
how many audience members participate in the rolling
of the ball. The game ends when the snowball melts.
An artist has to construct a gravity road (also called
Magnetic Hill) which would produce the optical illusion
that a very slight downhill slope is an uphill slope.
Thus whenever spectators think the artist is going up
the road, in fact s/he would be moving down.
An artist weaves an infinite tale net, which s/he uses to
catch the other players. The artist should carefully guide
the others into the net, for instance by saying that the
tale resides in the process of its telling; that the net is
open-ended; or that there are multiple entrance and exit
points in the net. As soon as the others are caught, they
look for the end of the tale, or try to enter or exit the
net, until they realise that they are caught in an infinite
tale. Usually that’s the end of the game.
The aim of the game is to leave the artworld and to
smuggle ideas into other contexts. Once the artist
completes the task s/he returns and reports his/her
adventures to the artworld. The game also can be
played by inserting plants into the other context.
The plants (often actors or performers) then not only
smuggle ideas, but also deliver information about
the other context to the artist.
opposites
The game is played to prove that every idea has its
opposite. To play this game an artist should attain the
dual state of mind, in which every idea is contrasted
with its opposing one. At the end of the game every
statement or visual piece produced by an artist should
be contradictory in its character.
margins
Margins is a reversed version of Checkers. While in
the original version players have to defeat as many
pieces as possible to win the game, the task of the
reversed version is to bring back to the board defeated
pieces from the Margins. In other words, the aim is
to convert marginal/defeated pieces into the rightful
players. Margins can also be played as an intervention
into Checkers. The game then functions as a parasite—
players have to be invisible, yet produce real effects.
The quantity of the marginal pieces appearing on the
board contributes to the player’s success, yet to win
the game the player may use only one or a few marginal
figures. The game is over once the marginal figures
dominate the board.