Tag: christine-wong-yap

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

This is the sixth and final installment of a series featuring four artists playing Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game, a dialogue-based game exploring cooperation, competition, and other themes of mutual support. For this final round we asked players to take turns sharing reflections on their experiences playing game.

Catch up with the introduction and meet the players, or find the previous rounds here.

You can play Round Six: Reflection by downloading a PDF or drawing cards online.

 

Christine Wong Yap: I was impressed with how similar our mindsets and approaches are. I wasn’t very familiar with Malcolm’s work, and I thought, “Wow, I am so lucky to be part of this conversation!” The way Ronny, Torreya, and Malcolm each approach artmaking is super interesting to me. I am glad we are all able to relate about these ways of collaborating and working with communities.

Malcolm Peacock: Yeah, I saw the same. I was really happy about that. I think there was a moment when Torreya talks about the stretch thing… When I was younger, bringing up personal things… You know, death is a super complex topic. Your context, relation, and proximity to it affects how you talk about it, and your comfortability with speaking about it with other people. While I’ve gotten really comfortable in speaking about that, I’m always—not on pins and needles, but—like, “Oh, hope I just didn’t kill everyone’s vibe.” So it was so nice when Ronny opened up immediately after. I feel frequently that most of us experience similar things in our lives, just at different times.

There were so many moments where I thought of Kimi [Haunauer] (who’s the reason that Sarrita and I met last year), and all of you guys’ practices. Especially, Christine, when you talked about going to Albuquerque and not knowing anyone…. Everyone described using their practice as a way to ground and find ourselves inside of a space to feel less alone, but also give back to people that maybe helped us feel something. It’s just so nice to hear all of you speak about your work and how much you all genuinely care. Like, “Yaaass! Everybody cares!” There’s something really significant about giving, being present, and showing up, and that’s been such a nice part of this.

Ronny Quevedo: I think it was helpful to see those common threads…. It was interesting to hear how there are common sympathies attached to who we are, how we approach our work, and how that relays into the way we approach our work. For me, it was interesting to see the emotional response to how we perceive labor and practices. It’s a nice reminder that this conversation allows us to talk about things that wouldn’t necessarily be available in public.

That reminds me of a lecture that María Magdalena Campos-Pons once gave at my grad school. She was really unapologetic about her work being sentimental. It was a really grounding thing to hear, because oftentimes there’s not many spaces to elaborate on the fact that our work really comes from a place of communication—that we have an audience in mind that’s very close to us. We’re not trying to make this huge worldview of our work, but in reality we’re trying to make connections, and oftentimes those connections can be resonant to so many people. That’s what I would take from the game.

Torreya Cummings: A lot of what everyone else said really resonates with me too. It’s nice to have a conversation with thoughtful, feeling people who care about the world and each other. I’m really happy to be a part of that.

I think the structure of the game allows us to get into that. I noticed that there were times when somebody was speaking on a subject, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, I have something to add to that,” but it wasn’t my turn to do that with my role in the game, but something else nice about that is that I was listening more intently. That is something interesting about the game structure.

We’ve all mentioned there is a part of the art world, a social aspect to it—but oftentimes you were trying really hard not to show any vulnerability. It’s difficult to build actual community and relationships without being able to be open about the sentimentality aspect of your work—why we are doing this, why we are using these tools to connect with people, and why that’s meaningful to us. It was a pleasure to listen to everybody else’s perspectives on these questions as well. So thank you.

*****

Via questions, examples, tactics, and listening, artists Torreya Cummings, Ronny Quevedo, Malcolm Peacock, and Christine Wong Yap (with gameplay facilitated by Sarrita Hunn) discussed collaboration, meaning, receiving support, supporting others, and whether nations (and art worlds) reflect majorities of residents or artists. In the process, we heard about collaborative models, what audience feedback means to artists, examples of artists helping artists, and critical questions of resistance and imagination. Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game can be a personalized, thought-provoking tool for addressing mutualism, agency, and artists’ roles among diverse and largely unfamiliar participants.

 

Inter/de-pend-ence has been presented as a participatory performative lecture at SOHO20 (New York City), 8th International World Hedonism Congress (Germany), Common Field Convening 2017 (Los Angeles) and is now available in conjunction with the current exhibition PlayTime, with support from the Peabody Essex Museum.

Sarrita Hunn and Christine Wong Yap would like to thank Peabody Essex Museum for the opportunity to create the online and DIY versions of Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game; game participants Torreya Cummings, Ronny Quevedo, and Malcolm Peacock; Kala Art Institute, where the game was first produced; and all the other spaces and people who helped bring the project to new audiences. Enjoy!

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

This is the fifth installment in a six-part series featuring four artists playing Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game, a dialogue-based game exploring cooperation, competition, and other themes of mutual support.

Catch up with the introduction, or find the previous round here.

You can play Round Five: Majorities by downloading a PDF or drawing cards online.

 

Ronny Quevedo, Answerer

Ronny draws the Question Card, “How much do you think the current existing country (art world) serves the majority of residents (artists)?”

No. {laughs} It’s funny. I think both those concerns reflect each other. I don’t think that the country serves a majority of residents. There’s just a huge ignorance to what actually makes up the country. I think for the most part people are underserved in a variety of capacities, not just socially but culturally. Having said that, if the art world is supposedly leading the cultural legacy, it’s trying to rectify it, but still has a lot more to do—in regards of physical representation, and also in terms of how it serves artists. Not just giving them the opportunity to to make their work, but if artists are generally involved in reaching your community—how does the art world serve the audience that the artist is trying to represent? I think they’re both hand-in-hand. I think both of them are really ill-informed at the moment, and slowly trying to rectify it. In terms of artists specifically, I would say there’s still like a lot of work to do.

 

Malcolm Peacock, Concretizer

Yeah—no and no. I think people are not clear, or maybe don’t even want to know what is a majority… what is the make up, who is here, who has been here.

Deana Haggag (president of United States Artists) and I are friends from Baltimore and she talks a lot about something that I really deeply care about: A desire to tell stories of artists (tons of artists, different artists), especially artists that are making work about things that are really relevant, important, and necessary to our existence, like the environment, incarceration, or our food. Her company did a big survey and found that over 80% of people in the United States care about art, the legacy of art, and the significance of art, and believe it is a good thing that can cause historical change. A number in the teens of those same people surveyed care about individual artists. I think that disconnect happens and there’s not enough spaces—I’m not just talking about physical spaces—for people to learn about individual artists. I think the government doesn’t want a liberated state or a liberated body of people. It’s been proven that art is a practice that can liberate people. So, of course, in this type of state, where we have this very dictator-looking thing, then there’s probably not going to be a relationship between the government and the art world to promote art on a scale that could change the world.

I think artists, art contexts, and the art world are largely at fault for being complacent in a system of capital, or a market, or schools… for being complacent in the types of structures and things that can be designated as art. That limits the types of artists that… all of us see. In general, for me, it’s a constant process of seeking: trying to find artists who I don’t know, that care about things that I care about, or care about things that I don’t know that I care about yet, because it’s so easy to get looped up in seeing the same names that I enjoy already.

This is going to be tangential: I think that the art world is the place where we could be more open. I think spaces like this—right now, this conversation—is a creation. It’s a great artwork because it’s creating a space for us to wonder—and I think that’s actually the key thing. There’s too much focus on what exists. There’s not enough focus on wonder, or seeking the possibility of something else. It’s pretty stagnant.

I want to make a quick comment about two articles on Artsy. Two years ago, Artsy produced an article about black artists, curators, and writers and at the end Lowery Stokes Sims talks about how black artists are finally getting attention and showing in galleries and museums, but the next challenge will be curation. There needs to be black and brown people in museums involved in the processes of exhibiting this work. (I’ve been wondering when the article about that is going to come out.) What came out a few days ago was an article about capital’s relation to black artists—all that is super important and very valid. The end of the article addresses, in three short paragraphs, Project Row Houses and other black-artist-initiated projects that aren’t reaping capital benefit. That is where I am talking about wonder; that area of the arts for a marginalized body to exist, that makes space for somebody that is not a black figurative painter to have their work recognized. I think we are still super far from that.

 

Torreya Cummings, Tactician

Torreya draws the Tactics Card, “Find the productive tension.”

There is certainly tension between the arts and the art world and the government…and then there’s tension between what is and what could be, or what has been and what could be.

A lot of people I know are working with the last one: what is and what could be…trying to imagine the future and what you know, trying to get out of a dynamic where it’s all about resistance—moving into something that could be looking past that and into: “What do you want?” and “How can you make it that way?” A lot of this is happening on smaller scales. Maybe it’s not, “This piece is going to change the world,” but maybe it will foster a conversation like we’re having here, like Malcolm mentioned.

Whether it’s productive tension or just the thing we kind of deal with all the time and work in spite of it, I’m not really sure—but people do keep producing.

I think, to some degree, resistance reinforces the thing that you’re resisting. It’s really hard to get out of that dynamic, especially when there is so much to actively combat, but I would like to leave some space for trying to impact our smaller corners of things. I hope that there’s some sort of aggregate, finding—maybe not productivity, that’s such a capitalist perspective—some generative tension.

 

Christine Wong Yap, Summarizer

Ronny started out with, “How much do you think the current existing country (art world) serves the majority of residents (artists)?” He said, “No,” for both. There’s a strong disconnect about whose counted, whose visible, and how this country supports artists. I think Malcolm agreed, saying a few different things. One was about a survey by United States Artists. There was a disconnect where 80% of the responders said they supported the arts for different reasons, and as a catalyst for historical change, but when they asked them how many of them actually support individual artist, it was a lower number in the teens. But art doesn’t happen without individual artists. Then he talked about an article in Artsy from Lowery Stokes Sims about diversity, and I think this topic has been getting more visibility, especially in New York with the city’s cultural plan.

Then there’s capital, and how it’s needed to support artists, but you don’t want the mindset that everything is a transaction. There was a through-line between what Torreya and Malcolm said about what exists and what is possible, what is versus what could be. To open yourself to wonder, to things that don’t fit in the art world, like Project Row Houses. Then, in the same way, in terms of activism: What are the limits of resistance? and How much does that reinstate? Reframing productive tension as generative tension.

 

Inter/De-pen-dence game play, Round Six: Reflection, will post next week—come back and play along!

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

This is the fourth installment in a six-part series featuring four artists playing Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game, a dialogue-based game exploring cooperation, competition, and other themes of mutual support.

Are you playing? Catch up with the introduction, or find the previous rounds here and here.

You can play Round 4: Supporting Others by downloading a PDF or drawing cards online.

 

Malcolm Peacock, Answerer

Malcolm draws the Question Card, “How do you support others/other artists?”

It’s funny, because the ways we support each other as artists are often the ways we support people in general. Which I think is really good.

My own emotional, personal coming of age—leaving for college—was marked significantly and very abruptly by the death of my father. So, I have taken the initiative over the last five years to do a lot of outreach, just reaching out constantly. That is one of the only ways I can actively, substantially, and sustainably support people who I think need and deserve support. Yet to return support that I have received is really complicated; being established on the backbone of death, it’s extremely serious to me. I have had to do a lot of labor in myself to make sense when that care or support isn’t reciprocated. I think that is a difficult thing to have to learn, especially post-death and as a child.

As an artist, when I have extra money in a budget, or in my personal budget, I try to spend that on artists, especially artists who are underrepresented in their contexts. So, if I’m at a print fair and black women artists aren’t getting prints bought, I’m trying to buy those prints. I am also trying to support artists in my practice by giving… I have a pretty conversational practice, and the work that I am making right now is really about feeling inside of capitalism, and all of the reasons why it is so difficult to find space to do so. I think it’s a good way to give to artists—artists who aren’t under a capitalist regime, feeling like they have to make their practice into a production. I want to be able to give those artists space to exist and to know that their practice doesn’t—shouldn’t be, and doesn’t have to be—contingent upon a market. I think it should always be contingent on their desires.

 

Ronny Quevedo, Concretizer

It’s interesting to hear Malcolm talk about those things in regards to death and mourning—issues I’ve been dealing with myself personally also with my dad. He passed away about eight years ago.

In regards to support, I try to understand what support means to me, through my own experiences which I felt not necessarily unsupported, but maybe ill-equipped or unprepared, or a completely new experience. I try to put myself in that position.

Christine, I’m going to use the example you used before because as we’re artists that are constantly traveling, I think this might become more recurring… When we come across a new or unfamiliar space, I try to find resources with which I could help. So, when Christine told me she was going to Albuquerque, I had been there before, so it was a really clear moment where I was like, “OK, I know what Albuquerque can feel like.” Your work is so reliant on community, and this project was contingent on working with immigrant residents, so I just made sure that Christine was connected to the people that I had worked with a year before—and Working Classroom is really well connected to the migrant community. That’s also a really sensitive topic—people who are in statuses that they would rather try to keep under a low profile—so I felt like it would be a good time to connect Christine with Working Classroom who are sensitive to the needs of the audience that she was working with.

 

Christine Wong Yap, Tactician

Christine draws the Tactic Card, “Discuss a 180º perspective.”

Not supporting artists? {laughs} Miami just happened and, I mean, not to knock anybody who goes to Miami [art fairs], but I definitely feel that the emphasis on outfits and heels and parties is not about art and artists. Just the fact that so many artworks are shiny bubbles that literally people want to see themselves reflected in—not in any deep way, but in a superficial, cosmetic way. That to me is 100% not about supporting artists. It’s not really a space intended for artists.

 

Torreya Cummings, Summarizer

I’m going to try synthesizing this a little bit. I heard people talk about similar things. One of those is support: The desire to support others and other artists. That is often coming from a personal place of feeling and empathy. You want to ameliorate it in other people, so connecting people with resources that they can benefit from—especially artists you feel like are under-represented, or aligned with your values—and trying to help them— whether through financial support like buying their work, or connecting them with resources in a new and unfamiliar place.

I think Malcolm brought up the difficulty in separating when you’re putting care into something and/or someone, and you may not get it back in the same way from the same person. That can be a difficult thing to overcome, but it sounds like it’s still seen as valuable (to put that effort into the world) even if it doesn’t come back to you directly.

Looking at money and the market system… You can support somebody financially by buying their work, but the market is not designed to be supportive of artists. It’s a tricky place where you know the difference between going to Miami and taking selfies, and supporting somebody whose work you admire… It’s still all about money, but it’s coming from a really different set of intentions.

 

Inter/De-pen-dence game play, Round Five: Majorities, will post next week—come back and play along!

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

This is the third installment in a six-part series featuring four artists playing Inter/de-pend-ence: The Game, a dialogue-based game exploring cooperation, competition, and other themes of mutual support.

 

Catch up with the introduction and meet the players, or find Round 2 here. 

 

 Play Round 3: Receiving Support by downloading a PDF, or drawing cards online.

Ronny Quevedo, Answerer

 Ronny draws the Question Card: “What is your most significant recent form of (artistic) support?”

My most recent form of support is from people who have been trying to stand up for me and represent me, in order for me to get back into teaching. That has been really supportive, in small efforts of doing portfolio reviews for somebody, or substituting for a class. That’s been really supportive in helping me feel like there is a community, support structure, or support system.

With regards to the arts more specifically, I was given A Blade of Grass Fellowship to do a project here in the Bronx. They provide support in a way that I haven’t felt before. As soon as the fellowship was announced, they contacted me asking me if there was anything else that I need. They’re reaching out to people to let them know about the project and connecting me to people that might help with the production of a store sign. At the same time, they’re being hands off on the day-to-day activities. So it felt supportive that they have a strong sense of confidence in the project and in me, and, at the same time, they provide structural support. Institutionally, that was the best form of support that I’ve felt in a long time.

 

Christine Wong Yap, Concretizer

It’s cool because my example relates to both of the things he was talking about. I did a project called Belonging in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this past summer. It was a participatory project where I invited people to tell me about places where they felt belonging. But I am not from Albuquerque, so a really big challenge for me was outreach and finding constituents or participants who wanted to work with me.

Ronny, who had done a project in Albuquerque, connected me with an organization called Working Classroom. I worked with their interns over two sessions and they submitted their own stories of belonging, and they also went out into their communities and interviewed other people about their places, too.

Like how Ronny had the help of someone for his teaching, sometimes knowing people to help you get in, connecting you, is really helpful. Then the support of working with an institution with a bunch of people is also is really nice. So, thanks Ronny!

 

Torreya Cummings, Tactician

Torreya draws the Tactics Card, “Stretch.”

OK, what I’ve been hearing are two interconnected responses: people and institutional support. People being part of institutions, connecting, and advocating—I think that’s where “stretch” comes in in my own process.

I’m really reluctant to reach out and ask for help. Where stretching comes in is when things happen when you leave the house, when you talk to people that you might not have talked to for awhile, or you go to an opening and you see somebody and you’re working on something similar, and you connect and share resources… “Oh I didn’t know you were looking for that thing… I know somebody else who might have that to offer.”

Stretching comes in assuming that there is no help, or when there is, asking: “Is there a stipend? Is there an honorarium? What’s your budget?” I don’t think I was really taught to ask about that kind of thing initially. I’ve had to learn, or get over my shyness to talk to people that I might be interested in working with but I just assumed they wouldn’t be interested. That’s how I think stretching relates.

 

Malcolm Peacock, Summarizer

Ronny talked about support in the general sense, and then he reflected on specifics within art, like having relationships to help him go back into teaching. Which was really cool to know that he has a widespread network willing to support him—whether it’s small teaching gigs, or substitute teaching—there are now avenues for him to go back into that practice. Then he talked about opportunities at a bigger level, at an institutional level, that let him have freedom in doing things, but was also recognizing that he needed some structural support to work on the project.

Then Christine talked about Belonging, finding people in Albuquerque, and not being from there. Ronny put her in touch with Working Classroom, which ended up becoming a significant part of the project that was able to help her locate community that the project could maybe be situated within, or that could maybe be situated in the project. So it’s a running pattern: individuals and relationships being previously established, to help projects go on, but then also institutional support, so there’s connections and advocacy.

Then we talk about “stretch” as the tactic. One new thing brought up—that I think was touched on a little bit by Ronny on how making something more positive in collaboration isn’t necessarily key—is insecurity. When we get into situations where we have to socialize, and we maybe haven’t been taught the types of methods to do so, ‘stretch’ is a way to overcome fears, or maybe just being okay with asking about space or a stipend, about travel expenses. Those stretches could fuel a more productive process and a more cohesive collaboration.

 

Inter/De-pen-dence game play, Round Four: Supporting Others, will post next week—come back and play along!

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Developed by artists Christine Wong Yap and Sarrita Hunn, Inter/de-pend-ence is a non-competitive, dialogue-based game exploring cooperation, competition, and other themes of mutual support. This is the second installment in a six-part series featuring four artists playing Inter/de-pend-ence.

Learn more and meet the players in the introduction. Play the game! Download a PDF, or draw cards online.

 

Round 2: Meaning

Christine Wong Yap, Answerer

Christine draws the Question Card, “What makes you feel meaning?”

I really like having a sense of purpose. I guess that it’s kind of a good and a bad thing to be achievement-oriented. I also really enjoy activities that give me flow experiences, the way I can lose myself in an activity that’s challenging enough that my skills are fully involved. For me, that’s often art practice, but at the same time it is really meaningful for me to see people engaging my work. To see them participate and see the interaction have an emotional resonance—that is really important to me because my work often begins with a feeling. To see people integrate that in their own experience is really cool.

 

Torreya Cummings, Concretizer

You were talking about your work being meaningful to other people… I feel that in a lot of the work that I do, I would like that to happen. I never really know if it’s doing that or not, but I have, a few times… I think I was at an opening at Yerba Buena Center and somebody came up to me and said, “Hey, I have your art on my phone…” and she shows me a picture of my work in a show I had done. She was like, “I saw this, and it was really exciting.” I didn’t know what to say in that moment, but I was also tremendously grateful that she had picked up the signal.

Part of the reason that I make art is to connect with people. I hope that….in the way that other people’s art has affected my life for the better, or made the world a better place for me to be in—I want that to happen….

With my project at the Oakland Museum (Notes on “Camp”), I received emails about it from people who said, “Hey, I like to spend time in there.” It’s nice to get that feeling: “Oh, OK, the work is doing what I wanted it to do.” Sometimes you don’t really know, unless somebody tells you.

 

Malcolm Peacock, Tactician

Malcolm draws the Tactic Card, “Find the pattern.”

I am going to interpret that as: Find the pattern between the last two responses. I think the pattern is glaring. Regardless of the type of practice that you have, if you end up caring about the work, the pattern is the desire to connect to people and express.

I think the flaw with a lot of interpretations of people’s practices, or the work, or the success of their work (I am in school right now doing my Master’s) is that there is a construct around how the success is contingent upon the communication of an idea or feeling to the audience (with some sets of tools that were created by the maker). I actually I think it is a really flawed way to evaluate or to think about art. At the end of the day, I think the strongest thing is the pattern that most people, most artists—whether they are in the studio, or having conversations, or whatever the mode of making is—are really just trying to do what Nicole Eisenman talks about in painting, what Chris Ofili talks about in painting, what EJ Hill talks about in performance, what Ralph Lemon talks about in choreography and dance. They’re interested in making work to communicate an emotion or thought to a group of people (in order reach people, in order to communicate) to find and locate their own position in the world.

 

Ronny Quevedo, Summarizer

The question was, “What makes you feel meaning?” I think, for a lot of people, that translated to how they feel meaningful. Christine was talking about having a clear sense of purpose within the work, and that being reflected in how her skill-set could match the task at hand. She finds meaning in work when people have a very clear experience with the project.

Then Torreya was talking about a specific example at Yerba Buena where someone told her that she had a photo of one of her works and that really flattered her and made her feel better, because someone had really understood what the project was about, or at least appreciated it. That was one thing that resurfaced: that idea of connecting to people and how a good response from somebody really brings it full circle. You never know the success or the impact of the work until people respond to it.

With regards to the tactic card about finding the pattern, Malcolm started talking about the overall desire to connect to people that was in everybody’s response and the idea that the success of the work of art is contingent to understanding the meaning of the maker, and how that can be flawed and very fragile in some instances. He referenced several artists like Ralph Lemon and Chris Ofili, who want to find their position in the world. For the artists he cited, that’s the most effective way of feeling success in a work of art. It reaches people and they can locate their position using the artwork as a reference.

Inter/De-pen-dence game play, Round Three: Receiving Support, will post next week—come back and play along!

Inter/De-pen-dence: A Game

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

Developed by artists Christine Wong Yap and Sarrita Hunn, Inter/de-pend-ence is a non-competitive board game that encourages deep conversation around questions of empowerment and support. Players share how they practice autonomy and relatedness via questions, examples, tactics, and listening. Inter/de-pend-ence emerged from the artists’ shared interests in mutualism, agency, and artists’ roles. Let’s play Round One: Collaboration.

The questions in Inter/de-pend-ence are derived from Yap’s “Artists’ Personal Impacts Survey,” which explored the positive psychological benefits of art practice. We first created the game as a screenprinted edition in 2016, and have included variations on the artists’ survey questions for general audiences as well.

How do we support each other? How and when do we ask for support? How does this empower us to move from competition toward collaboration, from scarcity toward generosity?

Holding space for meaningful conversation requires time, patience, and listening. We believe that with intention, reflection, and interdependence, we can each shape the world we want to participate in.

In conjunction with PlayTime, you can interact with Inter/de-pend-ence in three ways:

— Make your own version: Download the free PDF of Inter/de-pend-ence to print, cut, and play.

— Draw from the online card decks, made with the help of the Peabody Essex Museum.

— Read how four artists played the game. We invited interdisciplinary, socially-engaged artists from around the country to play with us (many had never met each other before). We’re posting transcripts of their gameplay weekly, round by round. This is the first of six entries—you can read Round One below.

 

How the Game Is Played

In Rounds One through Five, players assume a role and follow these steps:

First, the Answerer (indicated by a question mark on the card) draws a Question Card and responds. The Question Cards are based on a survey Christine conducted to learn how art practices can impacts artists personally and positively; in our game, variations for artists are optional.

Second, the Concretizer (indicated by a cinder block on the card) shares a specific example from their own experience.

Third, the Tactician (indicated by a lightning bolton the card) draws a Tactic Card and uses it as a prompt to give and interpretive response. Tactics cards were inspired by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidts’ Oblique Strategies, a set of cards for breaking creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking. They are intentionally oblique—there is no right or wrong way to respond.

Fourth, the Summarizer (indicated by a droplet on the card) summarizes the responses from each round.

Between rounds, players switch roles.

In Round Six, players take turns sharing their observations on the gameplay, such as noting common themes or subjective challenges.

 

Meet the Players

We invited three artists to play the game via video chat one afternoon in December. What follows is the transcription edited for clarity and concision. In addition to our invited players, Sarrita Hunn facilitated the game and Christine Wong-Yap was the fourth player.

Torreya Cummings is a visual artist in Oakland, CA. Her work is project based, and includes installations, photographs, videos, and performances. This work usually relates to notions of time, fiction, and place, and how these narratives shape and are in turn shaped by identity. Cummings also works in a collaboration called Shipping + Receiving, and was a member of the curatorial committee at Southern Exposure (SF) for several years. Cummings large-scale video installation project Notes from “Camp” is on view at the Oakland Museum of California through May 2018.

Malcolm Peacock is an artist and runner living in New Brunswick, New Jersey. His work centers the lived experiences of Black individuals and groups. His work is committed to exploring and expressing his fascination of the potentiality of Black lives in order to question and contemplate who we have been, who we are, and who we may be in the world. Access to arts engagement for people with disabilities is also a major part of his life. He is a 2016 Joan Mitchell Emerging Artist Grant nominee and has received fellowships from Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Ronny Quevedo has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Queens Museum; The Drawing Center; The Bronx Museum of the Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Emerson Gallery (Germany), among others. Upcoming exhibitions include Pacha, LLacta, Wasichay: Building the Indigenous Present at Whitney Museum of American Art. He is a recipient of the A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and Queens Museum/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists. He received his MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2013 and BFA from The Cooper Union in 2003.

 

Round One: Collaboration

Torreya Cummings, Answerer

Torreya draws the Question Card: “In what ways do you collaborate with others/on art projects?”

There are a couple of ways, maybe more … I have a collaborative, collective side project called Shipping + Receiving, which is me and two other people. We usually do one project a year. I think it is more of a true collaboration—versus the other kinds of collaborative work I do—because there’s no originator. It’s mixed up. We have a conversation, and then somebody starts laughing, and then: “Oh, we could do this …” or “Oh, it’d be better if we did this …” If we are all just laughing hysterically, we say: “OK, this is something we actually need to figure out how to do.” We really don’t have defined roles. We work together pretty organically.

The other kind of collaboration I’ll do is if I have a performance project. Then it’s more of a director role. So I ask people if they want to participate, give them an outline, and, usually, give them instructions. Then through following those instructions, things emerge that I couldn’t have planned for. But that is a scenario where it’s my project, and other people are participating in it. I’m setting the stage and letting the action emerge from that.

Otherwise, like with the glove project, I just asked everybody I knew for worn-out work gloves, and then that formed the piece.

 

Malcolm Peacock, Concretizer

When Torreya mentions giving a general overview or impetus for a project to a bunch of people, that is when you are setting the stage for them to partake in the project or experience. In early June this year, I was in Richmond, Virginia, where I used to live. I went back there to work on a project at the location where I first started making performative or experiential-based works. In revisiting that site, I wanted to work with the people that had given me objects that I carried through the slave show that I had attached to my body. But the second time, instead of having them be implemented in the piece through a physical object, like a stand-in, I really wanted them to have a bigger part, a more integral role in the process, from start to finish. I presented them with a project I wanted to make about liberation, through looking at the Gabriel Prosser Rebellion, the largest failed rebellion in the South that ended in his and thirty-six other people’s deaths. What ended up happening was that there was much more openness in the project. It wasn’t so confined to: “You must give me an object that means X, Y, Z to you.” It was more: “Can you describe the most liberating experiences you have had while living in Richmond, Virginia?” That left the project way more open, with everyone understanding they could overrule consensus or the impetus of the work. My role became more like “organizer,” losing a little of a role of “director,” and integrating everyone at the same level.

 

Ronny Quevedo, Tactician

Ronny draws the Tactics Card, “Make it more positive.”

I’m thinking about making collaboration more positive … and I don’t know how effective that would actually be—because I feel like if you’re trying to make something more positive, at some moment it was negative, or you’re not happy with it. So positivity, in certain cases, is really projections of what people find to be positive. … Collaboration can sometimes deal with really serious contexts, and sometimes it’s not necessarily about creating a positive space, but how to discuss ideas.

 

Christine Wong Yap, Summarizer

Torreya had three examples that you could see as three levels of collaboration. One is clear, a “true” collaboration. She talked about how if you’re doing an idea and you’re laughing a lot, that’s one way you know you’re on the right path. Then there’s another type of collaboration, where you’re the director, and you invite people to do something that is your own art project—you have authorship. But then in giving them instructions, sometimes they improvise and new things can emerge. And then there is another way of collaborating, where the contributions are more minimal. The participants give their gloves and then Torreya transforms them into a different kind of sculpture, so the interaction is fairly limited.

Malcolm gave an example which spoke to the three layers, and he talked about moving from a lower tier of, “You give me this contribution,” to a more open-ended and dynamic tier. His example was a site-specific project located at the largest failed slave rebellion in Virginia. He ultimately ended up asking people to talk about liberation. So rather than just reflecting on something and then handing over an object, there was more open-ended dialogue.

Ronny’s tactic was, “Make it more positive.” But he was saying that’s kind of a weird question, because it assumes that it’s not positive enough to begin with, or is somehow lacking. I think all these examples are pretty positive already, so maybe that’s a reason why it’s hard to make it more positive.

 

Inter/De-pen-dence game play, Round Two: Meaning will post next week—come back and play along!

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