“Play is not frivolous. Play is essential. __ In times when it seems the least appropriate to play, it might be the times when it is most urgent.”
The Game Game
(*a.k.a. The Sugary Factual Effervescent Prolific Warm Clear Dank Resilient Titillating Upside-Down Game)
Sculpture has always served me as a type of solitary play, where improvisation and imagination have found form in material. Gameblages presented the possibility of merging two things I hold dear, my assemblage practice - a sustained devotion to worn and weary objects - with the shared experience of collaborative play. The Game Game has activated many of my gameblages through consistent and periodic gatherings of “game” play over the past five years.
The Game Game Archive
This is a growing archive of an experimental, highly collaborative, ever-evolving, inherently imperfect, never ending game called The Game Game. It is in fact not even exactly a game but more of a gathering of grown adults where collective and collaborative imagination resulting in unusual and generally comical situations is encouraged for none other than the purpose of doing so.
It was originally conceived as an object-based sculpturally-minded board game to facilitate free play amongst ‘grown-ups’ but adapted to an online forum during quarantine. It has since returned to ‘real life’ manifesting in different forms - including one where the wall and furniture became the board, one without a board and variety of new gameblages that offer up objects as inspiration for playful interactions.
Puppenbuhne Helen Geng puppet reenacting The Game Game game play in which all players were asked to fashion an everyday object into a hat and wear it as they simultaneously competed in a 9-person staring contest. Everyday objects are often solicited as part of gameplay.
A game board assembled from objects around the house and made editable as a shared file. Each player moved their own pieces and recorded notes. Technical issue were abundant.
The Game Game
The Game Game is not a typical game. It has no finite rules, singular winner or rule maker, measurable achievements, tangible rewards, strategic motivations, serious rivalry, consistent visual system or predetermined end that most of us associate with gameplay. Instead, it relies on the collective imagination and raw creations of its player-collaborators to provide the answers and meaning within an environment that esteems the absurd, the impractical, the improvised and the unrealized.
Kat Geng-Caraballo hosts a playing of The Game Game sporadically yet regularly. She aspires to create a safe space for free play among adults where sitting with the discomfort of the unknown is ultimately rewarded with deep belly laughter and a shared experience connecting with others.
The inaugaral online rendition of The Game Game* with it’s founding players. This round’s player-ruler asked that we hold hands in the virtual realm. *originally titled The Sugary Factual Effervescent Prolific Warm Clear Dank Resilient Titillating Upside-Down Game by its founding players.
The Game Board
Each gameplay has had a different board. For some rounds it has manifested as a shared and editable file, at others a live streamed or hand drawn object-based board was operated by the facilitator, and for the inaugural online game the participants’ screens acted, however unsuccessfully, as the spaces on a board. Currently there are three assemblage-style board-sculptures in progress. While The Game Game most often engages with sculpture through the board making, it also frequently solicits everyday objects from players as another way to tap into the imagination and allow for visual storytelling or inspire gameplay.
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The archive below will document ‘board-sculptures’ as well as gameplay, either through video, screenshots, or puppet reenactments.
On Play
Play
Just a few of my favorite books, video clips, and podcasts on the benefits, history and manifestations of play.
Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch
*a.k.a. The Sugary Factual Effervescent Prolific Warm Clear Dank Resilient Titillating Upside-Down Game