URBAN GAMES IN PANDEMIC TIMES

The Covid 19 pandemic crisis has restarted the debate on how we can use the urban space as citizens in a safe and caring way. This research presents our explorations in human-scale board-games developed during the second part of 2020. Not only we had to rethink the rules of the games to cope with th...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ungureanu, Teodora, Mandea, Maria
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Art galleries & museums
Brainstorming
Design
Education
Games
Health and medicine and law
Housing
Housing developments
Interpersonal Relationship
Media studies
Narratives
Pandemics
Players
Policy, planning, forecast and speculation
Rural and urban sociology
Urban areas
Urban Culture
Urban Environment
Urban environments
Urban Studies
Visual Arts
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Summary:The Covid 19 pandemic crisis has restarted the debate on how we can use the urban space as citizens in a safe and caring way. This research presents our explorations in human-scale board-games developed during the second part of 2020. Not only we had to rethink the rules of the games to cope with the current pandemic situation and create a safe environment for the players, but also the concepts played in the games started to have a deeper understanding of processes that create or are created by the urban environment. The two games are `Far to Close` developed within Life Long Burning 2020, at WASP Working Art Space and Production Bucharest, and `The System in the Room` created during Simultan Festival 15, Timișoara. The first game explores urban situations and how the players deal and react to some trivial city-happenings. To win the game, they have to use the physical distancing rules to `move` in the board-game city and tell the story of their trip. The second game centers more on dialogue than on winning. This time the players move in a board-game that represents the system behind housing developments. They have to explain the concepts presented in this system and create together a narrative on how housing developments should work. While, at first glance, the games can appear different in concept, the hypothesis behind them was the same: how can we use games as a tool of understanding the relationship between the citizens and the urban environment. This paper will present our observations derived from playing and observing the two games.
ISSN:2066-026X
2066-8821
DOI:10.12753/2066-026X-21-074