Fireworks and Gunpowder
2018
Table-top game, installation, performance
Game-masters: Rondi Park, Ralph Parks, Soonjin Lee; Evgenia Bereza, Alina Izmailova, Maria Mozgovaya, Anna Nepsha, Irina Pavlovicheva, Diana Salakheddin, Yana Sidikova, Anastasia Shestak, Vladislav Vtornik
Commissioned by the 12th Gwangju Biennale, also presented at Bureau des transmissions, Garage MCA
In the establishment of informational autocracies and hybrid regimes, the usage of different modes of contact with data becomes key. The distinction between democratic and autocratic models becomes blurred. Complex conflicts and proxy wars often morph into a state of low-intensity global conflict. Politics become a continuation of war rather than the other way around. The fog of hybrid war covering the multitudes of world processes makes it difficult to map the abuse of power.
Fireworks and Gunpowder is an interactive, table-top game based on one created by the CIA, designed to prepare agents to address complex crises, and the board game Pandemic, the game about finding cures for viral pandemics. The project represents a simulation of cooperative actions in a turbulent world through gameplay. Fireworks and Gunpowder accommodates 2 to 4 players. During the game, the players must resolve the crisis in cooperation working through different environments: Privacy, Cryptography, War on Terror, etc. Players pick their roles: Ocean, Activist, AI, Red Forest, Plasma, etc. The performer plays the role of the Alliance Mediator. They walk participants through the details of the crisis and comment on the real events related to the crisis, controlling all aspects of the game and moderating the discussion in Alliance.
When an informational mist has enveloped us, it blurs the shapes of many things. Autocracy clashes with democracy, giving birth to hybrids, one of which you and the other players encounter: the Night State of Strong-Arm Bureaucracy (Informational Autocracy). Your objective is to find the night state within the three scenarios employing developed instincts and actions in an alliance with other players.
The poem included in the work appeals to an event happening in the “data mist”. Similar to the mist from the 1980 novella, The Mist, by Stephen King, the monster could be real or merely a hallucination. The poem warns about refraction that can take place if you come close to the hybrid political regime. It distorts the laws misused to punish thoughts, words, reposts, and likes, and changes the distribution of power and knowledge. This demands a different set of instincts and modes of co-existence.
