Proposal 2020 New Bridge Project Dungeons & Disaster

Uma Breakdown

Proposal: Dungeons & Disaster

A tool-kit to introduce artists to techniques of Role Playing Games (RPGs) as a means toward both artworks in the form of games, and as tools for developing creative practice. Drawing from the history of both forms I will show how the mechanisms of collaborative storytelling in RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons resonates with the creative provocations of artworks like Yoko Ono’s “Grapefruit”.

RPGs are both systems in which to improvise, and provocations to adapt or create new systems. I provide sources and links for artist to explore further, focusing on the genre of the “one page RPG” where there entire game is outlined on a single side of A4.

Finally I conclude by proposing that RPGs provide a framework to think about art practice as a continual process rather than one that resolves into outputs. This process is considered as a dialectical one between our active decisions and the friction of things outside us and our control, whether these be limits of clay or a dice roll.

My PhD looks at art practice through the overlaps of RPG manuals and feminist writing techniques. This PmP opportunity would allow me to share part of this research in a non-academic context, make contacts with other artists interested in similar practices, and develop further projects.

This project could be expanded into an event through conversation/play with invited artist/game designers such as Aido Wall, (http://rottedcavern.com/), Felix Kawitzky, (https://www.felixkawitzky.net/), or Allan Hughes & Mark Jackson (http://arcturusgames.com/).