I hate role-play. And have done so for as long as I can remember. Deep inside my mind I’ve somehow come to realise that not all role-play is Dragons and Demons and that it can have purpose and meaning. It can be used within a speculative design process or as a tool to generate imaginary communities that translocate us to a staged set of logics or modalities where expectations and accustomed patterns are turned upside down—like an inflatable bouncy castle for collective imagination. In reality, my mind is detached from the rest of me. I get uncomfortable, feel awkward and enter into an uneasy self-awareness that fixates me to the accustomed rather than release me.
It’s with that austere anticipation I take part in the artist Adam James’s LARP workshop at Rian in Falkenberg. During 90 minutes and based on the text “What if … a 1% Rule for Public Design” by Henric Benesch and Onkar Kular, 25 participants will attempt to reimagine Rian as a new form of public resource, a public design office.
You have been called to work for the public design office for a total period of no less than two years. As a citizen of Swedish society, you are requested to work 20% of your week with the public design office with the remaining 80% devoted to your existing work. Your wages will be commensurate with that of other public roles.
The live-action role-play starts with a series of short exercises that break the ice and that skilfully guide us further into the play and closer to our fictive characters. Gradually we are moved to a stage room where physical and chimeric relations are shifted, blended and distorted, and at the same time our fictional identities are incited and calibrated. We’ve been appointed roles according to Carl Jung’s archetypes: twelve trivial artistic types divided into three sub-variants each. In my case the instructions are as follows:
• The explorer
• Motto: Don’t fence me in
• You want to lead a more authentic life and believe this is best achieved through exploring the world
• You are ambitious and resourceful and will do whatever necessary to avoid a boring life
• Some people think you are a bit of a drifter, which is reflected in your fear of conformity and getting trapped
Uhm, no choice other than to dive blindly into the deep waters of exploration. The game continues and I follow the current. In the first of two scenarios our characters are confronted by each other and their respective experiences of public design. The rules are simple. Reaffirm anything that the other players say without going into a position of defence or opposition. Never step out of your character.
The second scenario forces us to negotiate in groups and collaborate on an actual proposal for how the public design office can be modelled, act and operate when integrated in an existing building, institution or design. Self-sufficient hotel/production/energy islands leave the mainland and float out into Kattegatt; mental travel centres without any connection to either train tracks or bus lines become bridges atop Ätran—a rotating home for the elderly that you can join or leave whenever you want to—are spinning us towards future solidarities; a great many small, inexpensive bath huts are spread along Skrea beach, with solar cells on their roofs. Our imagination runs wild as our characters become more verbal and exciting. But our conversation remains serious.
The play is resolved and we leave our characters behind when we close the evening with a reflexive talk between Henri Benesch, Petra Johansson and Onkar Kular. Back to the important, inspirational and thought-provoking text that we just played out. To ideas that turn our focus to the necessity of generating other attitudes and approaches to public space and public design, that allow for design professionals and the public to cooperate in the joint creation of future living environments. We quickly return to our ordinary selves. To questions that have been formulated before. Into familiar languages. For once, I would have preferred to stay in the critical state of the imaginary for longer. I no longer hate role-play.
—
LARP – Live Action Role Play was originally published in the AIO Journal 10, Disruptions in Utopia, Left Behind Land, June 2021. We would like to thank Art-Inside-Out for the permission to republish here.
