deepteawritesstuff

[deepteawritesstuff]

south london monopoly : a game building and play workshop

This feels like long overdue homework but here's some documentation from the weekender at Tate Modern curated and facilitated by yours truly.

The workshop revolved around the idea of creating an alternative version to the much-loved board game, Monopoly. Dealing with ideas of memory and identity in the city, I invited participants to nominate places they would like to see on the board game. This proved most fruitful as people with shorter attention spans could participate comfortably. A surprising number of participants added visual aids alongside their nominations.

In addition to this, we reworked the character pieces that are moved around the board using clay, and repurposed material. Keeping in mind the sensory needs of participants, I introduced materials of varied textures and malleabilities. Participants drew out places and objects that resonated with them, including the Lewisham Clock Tower and Telegraph Hill.

For the chance and community chest decks, we discussed accidents and happenstances, and where community and the system come into play as a consequence. We talked about people's experiences with the NHS, and the role that community plays in supporting them, all through some comical anecdotes about chipped teeth. The group decided this deck worked better as a work-in-progress piece and kept adding to it through the weekend.

One of the participants, when introduced to this section, immediately, and quite enthusiastically might I add, penned down "Pickpocketing", which, if you've heard anything about London will instantaneously extend to draw up images of bicycle theft and cyclist phone thieves. The horrors of having your wallet robbed include paying for a new BRP and going through bureaucracy, inevitably needing you to skip two turns. My personal favourite was a "Get into a fight" card requiring two players to rock-paper-scissors their way out of a fine.

We reworked the rules from the original game to reconsider how our understanding of winning has changed. The original game relied on the logic that moving into Central London and owning property in Mayfair was the most surefire way to win; players often play against each other with the aim being to empty everyone else's pockets fastest. In our version, we questioned what logics implied about power, class, and our motivations. Our new (and improved) board constituted of pairs of properties wherein one was private and one public; the owner of the public property forfeiting the right to rent but being exempt from paying rent at its private counterpart.

[deepteawritesstuff]

I only properly looked at 'Preserve Beauty' by Anya Gallaccio today. What were once 2000 bright red gerberas, the kind that frequent cheesy WhatsApp forwards from family wishing you Good Morning (pictured below), now stood as a wall of wilted brown at one end of the gallery. I'll admit to having pressed a number of flowers in my time, some particularly dense ones even rotting away between the pages of my sketchbook on occasion. And though I strongly believe that my collection to take on each of hers in a fight to the finish, I was amused mightily by how my worst-case scenario (a situation that would be a private affair confined to the few sacrificed pages of my book, the flower, and me) was blown out of proportion in public. Here were a ridiculous number of not-flowers, so old and wilted that the smell of rot had faded, reduced to a distant memory for when you take the trash out on Wednesday nights.

The adjoining text had something yolo-esque about the temporality of life, and about how each time this artwork is installed with fresh flowers, perpetuating a cycle of rebirth. I wonder if that means the idea is the art object in this case? On an unrelated note, I think it's cool. It feels alive and breathing, unconcerned by the environment that surrounds it, or by how its noose is tightened when the flowers shrink. Even at 6 p.m. when all the visitors are asked to leave, and the lights go off, the curtain falls, all 2000 gerberas do their thing.

[deepteawritesstuff]

an attempt.

Hi,

Expect everything from pdf uploads of random zines, playlists, recipes, reviews, to opinions (and maybe even personal anecdotes).

I might just post a ton of old stuff today in order to have something up, so here goes...

Nothing but nerves,

Deepthi