Tag: playtime-peabody-essex

Mark Bradford

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“I wanted to do a video of me playing basketball, but I wanted to create a condition, a struggle.”

 

 

WHO

Mark Bradford (born 1961, United States) lives and works in his hometown of South Los Angeles, where his community is a significant source of inspiration. Before earning his master of fine arts degree, Bradford worked in his mother’s hair salon as a stylist.

 

WHAT

For Practice, Bradford set out to make a video of himself playing basketball with challenging restrictions. Along with a typical Los Angeles Lakers jersey, he wears an outrageously voluminous antebellum hoop skirt. These skirts, worn by women in the pre–Civil War era, feature expansive boning that allowed for air circulation. Here, the Santa Ana winds lift the skirt and trip Bradford up. However, each time he falls on the court, he gets up, dribbles again, and eventually he makes the shot.

 

WHY

Bradford is a 6’8” tall black man. For years, he had to deal with people who assumed that he should be a basketball player. For Bradford, the self-imposed challenges in Practice represent the cultural, gender, and racial stereotypes that he needed to negotiate as a young man.

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith on how Mark Bradford uses play to negotiate the expectations that society places on us. Read the transcript.

 

 

WORKS

 

Practice, 2003
Video (3 minutes)
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

 

(Image credits: Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland;  photo by Sean Shim-Boyle (detail); courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, Switzerland.)

Cory Arcangel

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz
“Irony doesn’t produce anything. It takes the air out of the world and I can’t imagine taking any pleasure in that. I’m trying to find something hopeful, some kind of truth.”

 

 

 

WHO

Cory Arcangel (born 1978, United States) became well known for hacking video game cartridges and performing Internet interventions, but his practice crosses a wide range of media. His work fuses an interest in video art, music, coding, and online open sources—all with a tongue-in-cheek sensibility.

 

WHAT

In these works, Arcangel modified two popular Nintendo 64 games with a sly twist. In Self Playing Nintendo 64 NBA Courtside 2, all-star basketball player Shaquille O’Neal repeatedly throws air balls, always missing the basket. In Totally Fucked, Arcangel has removed everything from the scene except Mario, stranded on a block in mid-air, leaving him with nowhere to go.

 

WHY

Arcangel’s hacked cartridge videos evoke laughs at the silly subversion of iconic video games and the futility of the characters’ situations. But the joke fades and desperation mounts when we realize there is no way for anyone to win the game.

 

LISTEN

PlayTime curator Trevor Smith on why it’s fun to watch professional athletes fail. Read the transcript.

 

WORKS

 

Totally Fucked, 2003
Hacked Super Mario Brothers cartridge and Nintendo NES video game system
Courtesy of the artist

 

Self Playing Nintendo 64 NBA Courtside 2, 2011
Hacked Nintendo 64 video game controller, Nintendo 64 game console, NBA Courtside 2 game cartridge, and video
Courtesy of the artist

 

(Image credits: Courtesy of the artist, © Cory Arcangel; photo by Tim Barber (detail); photo by Maria Zanchi,  © Cory Arcangel; photo by Sacha Maric, © Cory Arcangel.)

Dispatches from the Field: The Board Room: Transcript

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

So The Board Room. We’ve described it as a board game speakeasy.

We have members that come in and play our library of games. We’re also open to the public on certain nights of the week.

We have close to a thousand board games in the library now.

Hi, I’m Tom Nimmo. I’m one of the co-founders of the Board Room. Although if I am being honest, it was Phil who first had the idea for this place.

I’m Phil Trotter. I had the idea for this place.

There are so many different kinds of games and you’ll see that certain people might be really good at one kind of game and really bad at another kind of game.

I really enjoy the face-to-face interaction of board games. There’s just so many different types of interactions that you can have with people and so many different types of games that just… such a huge variety. We think it’s cool as hell and so we want to share it with everyone.

Most of these other clubs are nomadic. They play at restaurants, they play at YMCAs, they play at libraries, but they don’t have a space that they’re renting out. We are unique in that way. I don’t think there’s too many clubs like us.

The board gaming community is growing. We’re bound to all be in the big . . . the bigger board game community sooner rather than later.

I’ve learned a lot about building an organization with social media. How do you advertise a board game club? I’m asking, how do I do it?

Please tell us.

 

Return to the video.

The Yoda Project: An Interview

Posted on by Rebecca Bednarz

“I remember sending it to my grandmother and my grandmother was like, This is the strangest Christmas card I’ve ever gotten in my life. And I said, well, you know, hang on, it’s going to get weirder!”

Artist Gwen Smith tells the origin story of her series The Yoda Project, photographs she first shared with family and friends as Christmas cards. Who is this enigmatic Yoda?

Read the transcript.

Play Digest: Play to Learn

Posted on by Eugenia Bell

PlayTime opens in one month and we couldn’t be more excited. For this week’s link pack, we’re thinking about play as an important means of learning and developing—not just for children but all of us.

While PlayTime can’t help but be based on the tenets of having some fun, we also recognize that the very nature of play possesses the potential to teach, transform, and thrill (tell us your thoughts on our play manifesto!). Play comes naturally. Learning through play is an especially rich vein and not one we should abandon in adulthood.

Peter Gray of Boston College has seen a decline in children’s and teen’s mental health that he attributes to a decline in play and adult (over) supervision of play time. But he and other psychologists think that moving away from a culture that values play and becoming one that views “play as a luxury”—for children and adults—is ignoring an important part of being human.

Playworks founder Jill Vialet is just one of the growing community of people who believe that a better play experience at school leads to better learners. (And by the way, Global School Play Day is February 7.)

Museums are paying attention to play and visitors’ needs, too (and not just PEM).

And it’s not only kids who are playing to learn . . . .

Stay tuned, too, for more on our upcoming PEM Partnership. We’re putting play into action with Horizons for Homeless Children and commissioned artist Marisa Morán Jahn.

Check in next week for a new roundup of the latest play news and stories.

(Image credit: Courtesy aAlok Khemka via Flickr.)

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