30. bis 31. Mai 2018, 10–18 Uhr
2 full days workshop for 10 to 30 participants
7.G01 (Zeichnungssaal)

Mark Durkan, Nina Runa Essendrop and Nina Lund Westerdahl (LARP masters)
Ludovica Parenti, Matthew Hanson (organisers)

The workshop is open for anyone, who is committed for the whole two days.
Please register: ludovica.parenti@zhdk.ch 

An introduction to Nordic Live Action Roleplay (Nordic LARP)
The experimental setting of this workshop tests alternative learning methods. It draws its methods not directly from Black Mountain, but works inherently with dynamics of cross-disciplinarity in groups and picks up the architectural infrastructure of the ZHdK as a character for its workshop.

The day’s 1st phase (The Long Context) introduce the performative place, and we explore urban spaces that doesn’t just have character, but is a character.
The 2nd phase (Feel your Feeling) centres on being connected to our surroundings, ourselves and others and how imposed restrictions serve to focus action.
The 3rd phase (Building Alibi) focus on how to activate a shared vision, collaborative character building and relationship creation, before we larp a fictional party.

Day II: Reality Fiction
We play a four hour larp (+1h intro), followed by a debriefing structured to decompress the experience and critically reflect on the roleplayed characters and the processes. We end with an reflection on how role play is or could be a part of the student’s own practise.

A Way to Play – an exploration of art and LARP in contemporary society.
by Nina Lund Westerdahl

This is not about who we are, but what we can become.

For a moment we live an alternate reality.
We are as true to this reality as to any.

Before we enter this space we prepare.
We negotiate the codes of social conduct/ our actions/ physical borders/ roles…
We attend. We consent.

The sites are navigated, sensory processes manipulated, and flexible identities inflated.

For now we rehearse alternatives. Realities. Possible futures. Possible Pasts.
Another now. How are we now and here. Nowhere. Now here.
Through the performance and the larp we get an embodied experience of the possible.

Now we embody the actions.
Of the roles we perform.
Of the everyday.
Of the extreme.
We take on the roles of humans in all situations.
We explore any aspect of life.
We look at people only as sensuous beings.
We perceive everything as consciousness.
We play a Rock.
We explore Society/ Social encounters/ Small and great/
The seemingly unimportant/ The seemingly important/
The moments of life -our own or other’s- we find hard to relate to.
We (re-)visit/ Pasts/ Presents/ Futures.

We question the hierarchy of perception.
The consumption of art, of theatre, of movies.
Where’s the border between the audience, the “participants”, the creators?

Afterwards the foundation for the experience is revisited.
We reimagine significant aspects of our formulations and unravel the fictional narrative.
The conscious reflection on ourselves/ the story/ the feelings/ reactions/
The expected/ the unexpected
The frame of (self)reflection is a tool, we carry with us.

Therefore it’s a practise space for how to live.
Not only the larp itself, but everything that surrounds it too.
A mode and a form of how to navigate
the social space between us /behind us /in front of us.

Larp is to immerse yourself into a fictitious reality. Or a real fiction.
Everything is fiction. And all fiction is real.

Immersion is the buzzword of the last years.
Immersion is the complete transformation of space.
“They” always compare it to when we’re pushed into water.
Our instinct of navigation (movement, feelings, reactions, language) conduct our lives.
When in water, we instinctively know, that we have to navigate differently.
Faced with this new environment we learn to swim.

We experience, how we can change our patterns of navigation,
We are faced with our capacities. And our incapacities.

Our reactions are, in “The Real World”, predetermined by the situation/ architecture/ culture/ the people we find around us. Often we forget that the situation is designed (social media, consumerism, society’s institutions…).We navigate by instinct.

In larp, this situationist frame is designed. No doubt.
Transparency is key, and by making the structures/ the design visible we can navigate differently.

We have the agency to play.
We can unlearn our predetermined navigation patterns.
We explore our new common reality.

We act.
We practise,
We learn,
we unlearn.
We empathise.
Sometimes
we shake our heads and move on.

Joseph B said we all are artists.
An artistic potential is within us. To be explored and developed.

He said art equals capital.

All is co-creation.
The beauty of larp lies in that fact.

Art is ungovernable.
It is the counterpart of the capitalist growth. Of the society based on greed.
The aesthetic potential is the contrast. The riot.
Slowness and attention are the resistance.

These cracks or small diversions or interventions we experience in the realm of larp seeps into the everyday / outside /or what they call The Reality.

We can create a Now of immediate perception- one that fosters empathy and sensibility. Degrowth and consciousness.

We need to practise.
To explore our inherent artistic potential.

It lives within us and we search for the release.
No one can take our creative force away.
It is our everyday.
Our politics.

It is the lives we live.

It is always now.