Games of the Oppressed creates a scaffolding for playing games critically and thoughtfully, with intention. It implicates players as designers. Following from the work of Augusto Boal and Paulo Freire, it seeks to break down the barrier between players and designers. Players change the rules during play. There is no active facilitator. By challenging players to make systemic change in the game, it gives players the tools for revolutionary work.
Games of the Oppressed presents a framework for encouraging players to change the rules during gameplay in order to practice for making change in larger real-life systems.
In form, it takes three parts: It is a self-propogating workshop which asks participants to make their own games. These games will be presented during part of the MFA show. It is a collectively edited player’s handbook to interacting with the games made by participants, presented and in mutable form online and physically. It is a series of example games made by Rose to more thoroughly understand the struggles that others seeking to articulate oppression might encounter.
Rose Klein is a human. They can most easily be found online at their website: [link] They like making poetry and realized recently that they could think about nearly everything they do in that context. They care deeply about the liberation of all peoples from the shackles of Empire-capitalism, whether through the creation of tools or the aiding of the collective. Here’s a poem:
This – is – the – space – in – between – two – things
Charge the line -/
revolution through performance,
revolution through play,
revolution through art
every day:
small acts of resistance
Do you want to be a part
of this
your presence recorded
every – space – used
If you want to know personal details about them, you should probably just be their friend.
From the 2023 DANM MFA Exhibition "Heap is Full".