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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

the table-word game experiment #1

the table-word game is a diagrammatic experiential practice whose result is:

a map that is a relational field of knowledge production and, that participants may carry on to their own framework, and use it for further experimentation of their questions, points of crisis and problematization.

a table that is an object over which you read again how your initial vocabularies have been crossed, performed and shared collectively.

a video of a plan sequence in which you can observe and reflect upon:

· how thought can be experienced as a plasticity of performative actions, movement and images adapting and modifying all the time.

· the transforming experimental process of your vocabularies and actions

· about how those are experienced and moved collectively

· about how those could become future “entries” or “access points” to consider new actions, concepts, problems or questions.


Basic Idea: to write and move across the table the vocabularies, concepts or terms that makes you busy or concerned at the moment; or that you may find interesting in order to problematize and specific field of knowledge in relation to the thinking process and context you are engaged with at the time.

Number of players: four

Materials:

· A long table

· A sheet of paper that covers the table

· Many different color pens

· Different types of tape (in terms of color, size…etc)

· Our own notebook and books or texts we were busy with at the moment

· Objects that were related to the process we were in. These objects were specific of the work we were doing, the cotidianity of our working space

· A mobile-handy camera

· Necessary sound equiptment to play music at some point.

Time frame: 1 hour and half

Conditions of the game:

· stick to the table as your only working space. The table is the laboratory-space of this production.

· we should start by writing the concepts, vocabularies or terms you are busy with

· continue by relating those, to those of the rest of the players.

· our entries, as well as the others, are constantly “crossed” by somebody else or, the entry point of somebldy can become the action of somebody else and all the way around.

· All this may be done performatively. Not only the actions we may do, but also the way the word is inscribed in the table, the way it looks, the process of its writing…

· we consider that, the production we make together, is an experimental field of performative operations in between verbal language and action, so as such the concepts, entry points or terms at work, are considered as a “sensible and shareable experience” not only as a rational, intellectual and individual exercise on making relations.

· The registration of the event through the handy-mobile camera is specific of the kind of performativity the experiment goes through: during the game, we passed the camera one to another. That means two things: 1. That we are responsible for registering the perception of what we are reading (you own actions, actions of others). 2. That we are responsible for taking or passing the camera to others all along the game.

This version was made in a residence at L'animal a l'esquena, Gerona (July 2010), with the collaboration of Lucas Condro and Natalia Tencer (Buenos Aires).