Risk, November 1, beginning of play (trial game)

Duration: 1 hour

Players: Jacob (yellow), Mauro (black), Ilyse (green)

Note of interest: Because we knew that more players would be arriving within the hour, we decided to play a trial game in order to familiarize Ilyse with the rules of the game.

Documentation: Photographs (5, Mauro and Jacob, some on view here); Live Tweeting (7, Jacob); Audio (lost, Jacob)

Winner: Mauro, by consensus (game not completed)

Risk, November 1, end of play (trial game)

Note of interest: By this time, three new players had arrived. Aram brings to the table a new understanding of the rules, combined with teenage memories of play; one of these rules is that everybody starts off with a fixed number of armies (20), distributed throughout the territories drawn from the decks:

Risk, November 1, beginning of play (main game)

Duration: 3.5 hours

Players: Aram (pink), Ilyse (green), Jacob (yellow), Mauro (black), Rhea (red), Megan (late entry: green)

Documentation: Photographs (30, Jacob, Mauro, and Megan, some on view here; further photographs posted on Facebook by Aram and Megan); Live Tweeting (40, Jacob)

Winner: None (game not completed)

Risk, November 1, end of play (main game)

Risk, October 18, beginning of play

Duration: 3 hours

Players: Sarah (blue), Mauro (black), Jacob (yellow), Dalia (late entry: green)

A note of interest: We – Sarah, Mauro, and I – began play around 7pm. We realized, about 45 minutes later, that Dalia was on her way, and would in fact arrive immanently. A conversation developed wherein we developed a process for ceding land, based on a relationship to our current occupations of land, our occupation at the outset, and what she would have begun with as dictated by the rules of the game. Sarah drew up a schematic whereby we would all cede three territories, including their occupying forces, to Dalia:

Risk, October 18, territories ceded to Dalia (green)

When Dalia left, around an hour later, a similar schematic was drawn in which we claimed the territories she had left behind:

Risk, October 18, territories claimed after Dalia's exit

Documentation: Photographs (12, Mauro & Jacob, most on view here); Audio (3 hrs, Jacob, lost); Live Tweeting (Jacob)

Winner: None (game not completed)

Risk, October 18, end of play

1.

Jamie Hubley, age 15

Tomorrow I am giving a presentation – a brief presentation – on a project that I imagine will preoccupy me for the rest of the semester, maybe the rest of the (school) year. Or, I suppose, it may occupy me for the rest of the year and some of the spring of next year. It is absurd to me that, beginning in September, my concept of what a year is changed drastically.

I am going to blog about it because writing about it isn’t helping. Blogging is helpful because the internet exists outside of my mind, whereas I am less than sure that TextEdit exists outside of my mind. In any case, there is a difference, at least in terms of a release of tension, between writing for oneself and writing for an (assumed) audience. Something about getting an idea out there, which in this case just means out of my head.

I am sitting at the kitchen table, next to a set-up board of chess. Also on the table is a cookbook, a book called Subtitles: On the Foreigness of Film; the novel Diary of a Bad Year by J.M. Coetzee, which I am going to bring in as an example tomorrow; the book GO for Beginners by Kaoru Iwamoto, as well as a pamphlet entitled “The Way to Go,” sandwiched in between these two books; Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal talks on Zen meditation and practice, by Shunryu Suzuki, in which I found tonight a postcard with the book’s titles in calligraphy as drawn by Suzuki. I put it on the fridge.

RIP Kool Keith

On Saturday, I will begin playing chess, once a day, for 30 days. On November 15th, I will begin playing go, once a day, for 30 days. A week ago Tuesday, I began a twice-monthly game of Risk at my living space, overca$h. A while ago, I sent an e-mail asking if I could visit, in a noncommittal fashion and with no specific project in mind, Larkin Street Youth Services, a haven for homeless queer youth; and I called the head rabbi at the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, curious about his role in shutting down a show of Palestinian children’s art at the Oakland Museum of Children’s Art. In my message, I lied and said that I was doing a project studying “successful grassroots organizations.” I was, in fact, curious at how one goes about demonizing children’s drawings.

I got a call back from his secretary a few days later, which was a surprise – I hadn’t been convinced by my lie. The first thing she asked was whether or not I was going to subject the rabbi to the “firing squad,” a choice of words I found interesting; she went on to explain that the rabbi had been lured into a radio show on a similar premise, that the radio show had consisted of the rabbi’s character being thoroughly assassinated, and that the radio station, as a courtesy, had sent the rabbi a copy of the show – just in case. She explained that she was an art teacher, that she took her kids to MOCHA all the time, that the drawings were clearly either not done by children or had been influenced by outsiders, that she – that everybody - had been shocked by the hostile response to JFED’s actions regarding the issue, that “nothing like this has ever happened before.” When, earlier in the conversation, I had clumsily mumbled something about being interested in grassroots “tactics,” she had done something between a gasp and a sigh. She gave me the number of the head rabbi at the East Bay Jewish Community Relations Council, who she said might have more ideas about organizing. JFED had, apparently, simply been caught in the crossfire. I didn’t call him; I probably won’t.

I don’t want to demonize this rabbi, or the other rabbi, or the bewildered, frazzled secretary I talked to. I don’t want to exploit queer youth. I don’t know what to do with either of these beginnings (these were both possible beginnings of projects). Or rather, I know exactly what interests me about them and I have yet to figure out how to grapple with it: there was a point at which the children’s drawings ceased being children’s drawings and began being objects of war; there was a point at which these homeless youth stopped being themselves and started being queer (in a derogatory sense), a point at which they will begin being queer (in a reclamatory sense). Will the drawings, or the youth, ever become themselves again? And by what process were they divorced from themselves, made grotesque, weapons, rejects, expelled from themselves into a void to be reclaimed by some side or another? Who do I talk to about this, and how?

In any case, I don’t want to make some kind of vague statement about it and then make an art piece based on this vague statement. Instead, I am going to play chess for 30 days and go for 30 days and write. I will also play Risk, once a month, or at least watch people play Risk and provide snacks and drinks for them. I don’t know if I’ll write about that, too.

What happens when two people play a game? First of all, there is the game: rules, strategies, a board, some pieces. Second, there is an environment: are we outdoors, in a room, a club? Third, there is a level of intimacy: are we lovers, are we friends, have we never met before? These conditions are by no means exclusive: we could be lovers playing chess in our kitchen, we could be lovers playing go in the park, we could be strangers playing chess in my living room. We could be on a boat. There is, on top of this, a level of spectation, of mediation: who is watching and how? How public, how private are we?

A game establishes a suspension between two individuals from which there are a variety of possible perspectives: there are a number of ways that each situation can be reviewed, extended, documented, etc. A game establishes a structure through which to relate; this relation is of a complex dynamic. That is, I can play go and chess to understand the concept of nomadology. I can play go and chess to understand my love of another. I can play go and chess to understand how to play go and chess. I can do all of these things at once. A game establishes a space: what kind of space?

I am interested not in game theory, nor in game culture. Or rather, I am interested in game theory and game culture, but only to the extent that I am also interested in exotic birds and deep-sea fishing: they are things that are interesting and that I would probably spend hours reading books or watching documentaries on, but I’m not sure that I would dedicate a whole lot of really serious investigation to them. Rather, I am interested in what happens in a space when two (or more) bodies agree to submit to the rules of the game, temporarily agree to be mutually dominated, and how this intentional – consensual? – situation of conflict might relate to less intentional, less consensual situations of conflict, and our ability to establish and maintain agency in these situations.

Click through for the synopsis from Game 1, October 4.

Risk: October 4, 2011.

Risk, October 4, beginning of play

Duration: 3 hrs

Players: Mauro, Megan, Zoë/Dalia, Jacob

Snacks: Pork buns, vegetarian gyoza (Trader Joe’s, Jacob); Newman O’s (Zoë); Dark chocolate almond cookies (Trader Joe’s, Dalia)

Beverages: Fog Head Pinot Noir ’09 (2), The Honorable Pinot Gris (1)

Music: Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Drake

Documentation: Audio (1 hour, Megan); Live-blog (10 posts, Jacob)

Winner: none (game not completed)

Risk, October 4, end of play

I’ve recently – not that recently – begun classes at the California College of the Arts, on my way, hopefully, to an MFA through the Social Practice Workshop. As part of my studies, I’ve been asked/required to undertake a “fieldwork” project. This is problematic for me because I have a deep suspicion/wariness of the artist as researcher/savior model, where an artist goes to a town, undertakes an investigation, etc, and shows everybody the light of the Truth. I think I am, for the most part, unaware of myself, but I am certainly aware that I do not know what the Truth is. In fact, I’m not positive I care.

So I decided to pursue a few paths that seemed either entertaining or interesting or both: volunteer at a homeless queer youth center, something I’ve been wanting to do, something I’d love to be able to make work about without exploiting homeless queer youth, and so on; learn how to play chess and go, and generally delve into war or war-related games; and make some calls regarding the recent blockage of Palestinian children’s art at the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland. With all of these projects, I was relatively unsure of what I was doing. I still am relatively unsure of what I’m doing, but at least today somebody called me back.

Last week I left a message on a rabbi’s answering machine. The rabbi works for a Jewish community group out here, and I had seen that group’s name in articles regarding the children’s art fiasco, and I was curious as to how a bunch of children had been demonized so thoroughly and successfully. I called and lied, sort of, presenting myself as a grad student at CCA in Social Practice doing a project on grassroots organizing. I was nervous about even embarking on this project – as I am similarly nervous about volunteering at the youth center – because I figured it would make me too depressed. Luckily, I figured, the rabbi wouldn’t call me back.

Today, however, his secretary called me back. Her first question was whether or not I intended to put the rabbi on “the firing line.” She mentioned that he had recently been interviewed on some radio show, had had his character thoroughly assassinated, and had subsequently received a CD of the show, just in case he had forgotten or wanted to relive the trauma. She mentioned that this sort of thing had been happening quite a bit, and seemed genuinely shocked and surprised by it. When I repeated my bit about grassroots organizing, she did something between a laugh and sigh and said that she had no idea about organizing, that the rabbi and his organization had in fact done no organizing. She mentioned that she was an artist, an art teacher, that this was the first time anything like this had ever happened to her, to the rabbi, to their whole organization, that “we take our kids to MOCHA,” and that, if there had been any organizing, it had been by a different organization, and here was their number. She sounded genuinely distressed and I felt bad for her and guilty for assuming these people were Zionist monsters hellbent on slandering a bunch of children just because they were Palestinian. She said: “what was represented pictorially…wasn’t there.”

Her point was that there are no stars of David on Israeli tanks, and since a few (many?) of these children’s drawings feature this image, then therefore perhaps these children had gotten some suggestions about what to draw. She made a similar, but contradictory point, that some of the drawings were too detailed to have been drawn by children. What I realized as she was saying this is the children’s drawings have been untethered from reality, and it is precisely this process that I am fascinated by. At this point it does not particularly matter who drew these pictures, nor does it matter where they are from; what matters instead is the vitriol around them. This transition is emblematic of Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of affect: from their beginnings as personal expressions, these children’s drawings, have been “uprooted…projected violently outward into a milieu of pure exteriority that lends them an incredible velocity, a catapulting force…” (A Thousand Plateaus, 356). That is to say, they no longer operate by the internal logic of a child’s drawing, a necessarily and expectedly subjective rendering of an event that has in some way been experienced; instead, they now operate according to whatever logic is applied to them: these are drawings by innocent persecuted children, can’t you see they are no different than the drawings by Iraqi children exhibited by MOCHA in the past; these are drawings by anti-Israeli thugs or highly influenced by anti-Israeli thugs, they are violent and anti-Semitic and not suitable for children’s eyes; and so on. The drawings, at this point, exist only as the sum of the controversy surrounding them, which they feed and which feeds them. They are no longer drawings.

The object of my fascination is the point at which these drawings stopped being real. I have been convinced for a while that the object of my investigations, artistic and otherwise, is when things become real, or, more recently, the appearance of the Real as things slide away from themselves; maybe what I’m actually interested in is the point at which things stop being real. Baby steps.