THURSDAY 6/10: Ludic Liberation Lab ~ Playing with Translation
(re)making meaning in the in-between
Have you ever tried to adapt a joke into another language? Summarize the gist of a complicated movie, your life story, a theoretical text, or a dream? Did you ever manage to write a poem about a mixed feeling? Then you've struggled with translation – the tricky process of de-ciphering and re-ciphering meaning across symbolic codes.
Despite all the technical and urban dictionaries, translation apps, spell-checkers, and transcription AI, linguistic indexicality eludes us! Our tools are not enough to put the Humpty Dumpty of a specific cultural affect together again (what really IS Hygge??). Human expression is hopelessly imprecise and inventive, while being painfully particular to each utterance. The only thing left to do is embrace the mess and play in the space in-between meaning and signifier.
This month at Ludic Liberation Lab, we will be playing with translation by transforming, degrading, bastardizing, annihilating, and mutating texts. We will empty words of their meaning, dig down to their deepest origins, try to recover what's lost in translation, and experiment with the limits of expressible Truth and misleading Elaboration. While any level of multilingualism will surely enhance your appreciation of this month's games, it's NOT required for participation in the Lab. In fact, we are sure to discover that we are all already multilingual and always translating. Ultimately, we will aim to liberate our capacity to play with the infinite power and woeful inadequacy of the meaning-making-system that is language(s)!
This lab will be led by Ken Scriboni, an Italian teacher and translator, a believer in the promises of communism, an ex-food-and-beverage-industry worker, an apprentice of dialectical magic, and an organizer at Incite Seminars.
JOIN US to play with translation!
THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 6-8:30pm Eastern Standard Time – that's 6pm Philadelphia Time, 5pm Chicago Time, 3pm Los Angeles Time, 11pm London 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
Gamemaker/Destroyer