For those of you who do not know, I am a confessed addict to BBC iplayer. And there is nothing more tempting than a good documentary on BBC4. Last night I watched the second episode of Games Britannia. The series traces the development of games throughout British history, from mysterious druid board games to Monopoly and beyond. For those of you living in the UK, here is the link:
And there is something I want to share with you… Bear with me.
Half way through last night’s episode presenter and historian Benjamin Woolley discussed the subtle, almost stealthy political role that games can play. I quote:
“In the years leading up to the First World War, in 1909 an apparently conventional race game was published. It was titled 'Pank a Squith', and it encoded a radical political message. It represented the escalating battle between Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the women’s suffrage movement and her arch enemy Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The aim of the game was to get a woman into that bastion of male oppression and exclusion, the Houses of Parliament. Her path was strewn with obstacles such as imprisonment and ridicule, and opportunities such as financial sponsorship and public support. Each player had to pick their way through this political mine field.”
Half way through last night’s episode presenter and historian Benjamin Woolley discussed the subtle, almost stealthy political role that games can play. I quote:
“In the years leading up to the First World War, in 1909 an apparently conventional race game was published. It was titled 'Pank a Squith', and it encoded a radical political message. It represented the escalating battle between Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the women’s suffrage movement and her arch enemy Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. The aim of the game was to get a woman into that bastion of male oppression and exclusion, the Houses of Parliament. Her path was strewn with obstacles such as imprisonment and ridicule, and opportunities such as financial sponsorship and public support. Each player had to pick their way through this political mine field.”
Woolley then talked to Andrew Sheerin, the designer responsible for the satirical board game ‘War on Terror’ (http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/). I quote Sheerin:
“I think games are ideally suited for exploring current events, and particularly very difficult and complex subject matters. And it sets up a conflict around a table, but a safe conflict. You are not having a political debate, which can turn personal, but you are having a staged conflict and through that you come to a resolution.”
Now, why would I mention this to you? I am aware that we have not yet outlined the particular activities involved in i am small THE WORLD IS BIG (I am enjoying the mystery at the moment, so watch this space for more info in the future). The one thing I can tell you is that it is not anything close to a board game. However, I think that Sheerin’s statement is relevant to the project nonetheless. Through this piece we are tackling a number of current events that are certainly difficult and complex. So, who are the players? Well there will be a core of selected collaborators who will be engaging directly in the activity. That said, the audience will not be relegated to simply spectate, but will be able to ‘join in the game’ in different ways. So, what is the game? As I said above we don’t want to give much away just yet. What I can tell you is that it will not follow a conventional set up like the games discussed in Games Britannia or the games that Sheerin is referring to. With that I mean that the rules of engagement are not based on a conventional structure where two or more parties directly confront each other (as it might be in chess or Trivial Pursuit). In our ‘game’ the conflict is not between the different ‘players’. Instead the conflict lies in the tension between the activity and the time dedicated to it. In a way, i am small THE WORLD IS BIG is a race against the clock. The different ‘players’ (collaborators and audience alike) will directly and indirectly engage in an communal activity that is set to take place over a finite duration. Jointly, as a team, we have to get it done –or rather, as much as we can. How much will we achieve? Will we ‘save ourselves’ in time? What role will you play? i am small THE WORLD IS BIG is a challenge to us all, it is a safe space we can use to practice/rehearse/play-out many of our current challenges and conflicts. Will we arrive at any resolutions?
Well, that’s up to each and every one of us…
Pablo
Let me start with the Senate and perhaps later I will get to the duration. For those of you who might not know it, this building is situated in the neuralgic centre of the University of Kent’s Canterbury campus: in front of the library, Eliot and Rutherford Colleges at either side, and a stone throw’s away from The Registry and the Gulbenkian Theatre. This central position, as well as its name, reflects its role: a symbolic seat of power. The Senate’s large upstairs room serves as the meeting place of various university governing bodies (for instance the Humanities’ Faculty Board will be convening there on the day before our project take place). It is a space where statements are made, discussions take place, votes are cast and counted, and decisions are arrived at. I am trying to remember my own impressions of the building whilst I was an undergraduate. It’s proving to be difficult. I had certainly not been inside the Senate, nor did I have any actual knowledge of what happened inside it, but what I find most confusing is that although I was a conscientious student I seemed to lack any curious desire to find out, to sneak in (surprisingly the building is open throughout the day and it would not have been hard to take a peek). So in my mind at least, the Senate was simply an amorphous presence on campus which I loosely associated with power, its mystery and inaccessibility.
So how did we come to choose the Senate as our location? As a principle, when we start a new project we attempt not to get bogged down in practicalities, allowing the concepts to develop freely before exploring how they will be realised. However, as it the case with much of our work, this issue is not as simple and linear as that; the chicken and the egg, the snake biting its own tail. There is a moment -difficult to pinpoint- where the core concept of a project meets the various practicalities involved in its realisation and begins to be shaped by them. Location, of course, is the first of such on the list. Once i am small THE WORLD IS BIG had begun to take shape and the project’s core had been established we reached this moment. Where should it take place? Schengen Smile, the piece we devised last February for WorldFest 2009 took place in a series of teaching spaces: a corridor and two seminar rooms. The starkness of these spaces contributed to the bureaucratic atmosphere we were creating and so the marriage between the site and the piece was easy. Now thou, our desire to produce a more ambitious project was coupled with our conceptual interest in facilitating a coming together. The small and out-of-the-way rooms which had been the setting for the solitary journey the audience took in Schengen Smile would not do. We had to upgrade to a space that was larger, more ‘important’. There are only a few such spaces at the University of Kent’s Canterbury Campus: the large dining halls in Eliot and Rutherford Colleges and the Senate Building’s upstairs meeting room. And so the decision was made. With its substantial dimensions, central location and powerful associations the Senate presented itself as the ideal location.
