🎲 THURSDAY 4/8: Ludic Liberation Lab ~ Playing with WASTE
can we embrace the life-affirming joy of excess, decay, and remains?
Dear Ludic Liberators,
Waste is a paradox. On the one hand, we waste something when we don't use it, letting it rot, decay or fail to actualize its potential. On the other hand, waste is itself the excess and remains of productive activity, the scraps of material on the studio floor, the outcomes of digestion. We strive to minimize our waste yet we can never eliminate it, so we hide the reminder of our inefficiencies from view: we pay for waste "management'', we flush our wastes down the drain. And yet, it lurks, everywhere in our external surroundings, deep inside our interiors.
This month at Ludic Liberation Lab, we will experiment with waste as an object of conceptual play, seeing if we can make friends with and delight in experiences of excess, unused potential, and over-ripeness – as Nature might! We'll celebrate our greatest wastes and even plan on ways we might gloriously squander our futures. In the process, we'll contemplate waste's relationship to life, capitalism, and liberation.
It's guaranteed to be a time well wasted!
This month's ludic liberation experiments will be led by Co-PIs (Principal Investigators) Natalia Stroika (Existential Gamemaker/Destroyer and founder of Ludic Liberation) and John Robb. John is a game/puzzle/experience designer and playful gathering facilitator. This season he is asking the question of how we can create new relationships with our rooms, homes, and walkable surroundings. He is the co-founder of Puzzling, whose most recent project is a narrative location-based puzzle game called The Queen of Schwabylon. Previously, John worked at places like Google and Allianz, showing teams the humans that are affected by their products.
JOIN US to play with waste!
THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 6-8:30pm Eastern Standard Time – that's 6pm Philadelphia Time, 5pm Chicago Time, 3pm Los Angeles Time, 11pm London time, 12am Berlin time, 2am Moscow time, 7am Macau time, 10am Melbourne time.
Ludic Liberation Lab lasts for 2.5 hours, which includes fun warm-ups, collaborative gameplay and design activities, and a debrief that helps us build collective wisdom about play & liberation. Join if you're curious, stay as long as you like!
Ludic Liberation Lab is a contribute-what-you-can adventure! Please see our variable participation options and select the one that delights you most. All contributions go directly to support the gamemakers and advance research into Ludic Liberation.
With Jest & Justice for All,
Natalia