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[introduction-to-performance-vol4]

A letter to prospective players

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Hi all !

If you’ve clicked on this, it means you’re interested in Introduction-to-Performance: The Roleplaying Assessment Game, taking place at Offener Ofen, AdBK Nuremberg in January 2023. Thanks for clicking! Here, I’ve tried to compile all the information you might need to know before getting involved  :)

📎💌⚖️ 

Who am I?

My name is Gordon Douglas and I’m a performance artist from Glasgow, Scotland. I am currently studying on the MA Live Art Forms programme, and am resident in Nuremberg every October, January, April, and July. In the context of Introduction-to-Performance, I’ll be your host, the game’s administrator, and a fellow player :)

To give you a brief insight into my practice, I work closely within arts and educational organisations: occupying office spaces, reorganising archives, celebrating birthdays, hosting events, assembling publications, and staging tests. Some of my work can be found here if you’re interested. As part of my practice, I devise games that offer collective moments to rehearse destabilising (or queering) inherited power dynamics within cultural austerity. 

One of these games is called Introduction-to-Performance; and I am very grateful to the team at Offener Ofen who have agreed to facilitate its fourth volume in January 2023! 

🧭➿🎲

What is the game?

Introduction-to-Performance is a roleplaying game where participants join a fictional Performance Art Awards Agency. The role of this agency is to collaboratively assess 100 historical performance works, and assemble a shortlist of 10 ‘good’ performances. The game is therefore a collective decision-making experiment, where we decide on our values together– coming to beautiful consensus, or uneasy compromise on what we believe are the best performances from the longlist.

I am writing today to invite you to be part of this fantasy Awards Agency, and together we will assess 100 existing performances towards a shortlist of the TEN BEST PERFORMANCES OF THE GERMAN SPEAKING WORLD EVER! We might also choose a winner, who will receive a fabulous prize :)

I’m not an expert in this world (I’m Scottish, I can’t speak German, and I only live in Nuremberg for four months each year), so I’m also going to participate as a player and learn about these performances too. The shortlisting method that I will administer throughout the game is inspired by theatre shortlisting agencies (Total Theatre Awards), popular education exercises (Peuple et Culture), and trial and error. The sessions will attempt to offer a platform to speak critically about performance and its qualities in a fun environment. 

⚽️📱💳

What do I mean by performance?

The game is open to all experiences because performance is everywhere. It is in the cultural phenomena of shared ritual, in the management or governance of our shared arts education, in the circuitry of the device you’re reading this on. There is no requirement to hold primary (embodied) or secondary (read or seen) experiences of performance art to take part.

The longlist will be conceived of performances from a variety of traditions, interventions, and systems. It will include protest movements, persona works, participatory practice, performance scores, photographs, narratives, organisations, websites, social experiments, provocations, archives, viral content, obsessions, re-enactments, mail art, embedded practice, conversations, actions ... etc.

🎉🏆🍾

About the Sessions

The game will take place over 6 evenings, and will involve delegating performances from a longlist of 100 works, to players for independent research. Each session will begin by airing all the researched performances in the room, and invite us to make collective decisions about what goes forward in the process and continues to be discussed. 

The process is relatively simple once we get going, but I’ll explain it all in detail at the Introductory Session!

It is important to be able to commit for the six evening sessions in order to carry the conversation from one session to the next. I will provide soup each evening and some beers/wine, so we have enough sustenance to hold us in the debates!

The dates for the game are as follows:

Tuesday 10th January, 6-8pm - INTRODUCTORY SESSION

Thursday 12th January, 6-8pm

Monday 16th January, 6-8pm

Thursday 19th January, 6-8pm

Monday 23rd January, 6-8pm

Thursday 26th January, 6-8pm - FINAL SHORTLISTING SESSION

The game will be hosted in english, and all students of the AdBK are welcome. There is however a limit of 10 players, so the game will be limited to the first 10 people to respond to this call for players.

🪨📃✂️

Interested?

If you’d like to take part, please fill in the form via this link; or, alternatively, email the following details to gordon.douglas@adbk-nuernberg.de

your name; your pronouns; three words that describe the interests or concerns explored in your practice. And if you want to suggest performances or artists from the German Speaking World for the longlist, I am happy to receive these too (this last one is optional!)

I will message everyone at the beginning of January to send some details about our first session. 

This is the fourth iteration of the game, with previous volumes having taken place at: Edinburgh College (2016-17); Rhubaba Gallery and Studios (2019); and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (2021). A website documenting the first volume can be found here. 

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Really looking forward to hearing from you, and to learning together :)

Gordon

x