Taking Sides: for Part of the Game Applied Game Theory in Urban Free Space

The Freee art collective football tournament recodes football as a platform for opinion formation and disagreement by placing slogans where footballers’ names and sponsors’ logos go. Teams are not selected by managers or peer pressure but by individuals choosing a slogan to wear. Fans who support a particular team, having no geographical name to shout, will chant the slogan together rivalled by the supporters of another team. The winning team of the tournament will bring honour to its slogan. Being ‘part of the game’ demands participation in a delimited, rule-bound space. Games are simplified representations of society within which particular relationships and practices are repeatedly and competitively rehearsed. Some games are just that: games and nothing more. But other games – those played with politics, money, power, space – affect us whether we are part of the game or not. Taking the city itself as the board on which to play. Six artistic positions will interrogate the meaning of the game itself, will enact the gamification of current issues, will ask about the possibility of not playing along, and will explore the various ways in which the city is always already a playground – a site for multiple, contrasting and conflicting games. You are cordially invited to join us at various sites throughout the city: Come out and play! nGbK project group: Claudia Burbaum, Angus Cameron, Berit Fischer, Folke Köbberling, Pia Lanzinger, Olivia Plender Contributions by: Angus Cameron, Brigitte Felderer, Freee, Ellie Harrison, Folke Köbberling & Tricia Middleton, Brandon LaBelle, Pia Lanzinger, Heinz Schütz, transparadiso, Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt