make and break club: thoughts after pilot session
We had the first session of make and break club yesterday where we played around and made zines with electric zine maker (ezm). It was unhinged and beautiful and I had a lot of fun. EZM works so well for a workshop where you can play around immediately. The tool is designed playfully, everything is responsive in a manner that is full of surprises, and you don’t really have to worry about messing up because messing up is the process. You get images, draw stuff, and add jank to it in any way you like.
EZM is also a tool that is very open to being broken. It has some bugs which can make it crash once in a while, but not a big deal, you gotta keep saving as you go anyway. What makes it very open to being broken in a fun way is that the files you edit are open to access manually. Since each zine page is a literal png file you can just take those files, play with them outside and bring them back in. We didn’t do much of that but it might be fun for future iterations of EZM sessions.
My phd research is partly about the internal rules we have in play-practices, and how we can reflect and experiment with these rules to formulate alternative ways to play. It is centered around play and games, but I think the same applies to making things as well. Maybe in a future session we can write our own internal rules of making zines, and see how we can play with them.
Aaaaanyway. There’s a problem with these workshops, and that problem is the computer (ikr). Working on a computer is very often isolationary as you get wrapped up in a dialogue between you and the computer. If you are not collaborating with someone else(s), it can just completely wrap you up. I don’t really want these workshops to turn into coworking spaces really, the conversations, dumb jokes, the human part in it, need a way to let these shine.
Yesterday we hotseated a few computers, making zines collaboratively. It worked really well for EZM as the zine structure allows people to just come in and make a page. Seeing what people made before, allowing them to build on it. I think a similar structure could work really well for bitsy as well. You could make up a room fairly easily and quickly, the next person can check that out, and make up a new one. Or maybe not even look at what’s been done before, do it exquisite corpse style. All of this playing as making deal has a surrealist tinge to it anyway. It doesn’t surprise me that surrealists/dadaists/etc came up with games constantly for their art practices. The added structure of games (in a very loose sense) can disperse the conscious voices in our head. Like how we often see people’s subconscious (or sometimes even repressed) sides come to the surface when they are all wrapped, playing a game.
I keep going on tangents!! But!! I think the first session was beautiful. Now it is time to build up on it. I am drafting a schedule for september, and that will be available some time soon. I am thinking, bitsy, sound toy, ezm and rule reflection. Tickets will be up soon as well. Take care, come make and break some time.