The last game took place in Maastricht, Netherlands on the 29th of May 2024

This game was designed to be used for non-formal educational purposes for conflict mediation.

Based on home.

The Cypriot bastard context.

DEVELOPMENT:

TEST RUNS:

SYSTEM:

PERFORMATIVE TOOLS

My method of working consisted of multiple test runs.
The previous versions of the game helped me narrow down what was important.

I wanted the game to be silent, physical, based on roleplaying.
I wanted to give my participants free will, or the feeling of free will, to create their own path, while keeping them in the dark about some other aspects of the game. This became easier once different performative elements were introduced.

Once the goals of the game were established, a system of hierarchy needed to be established. I took inspiration out of the actual system that exists in Cyprus.

I introduced the characters:
-The European tourist
-The Blue internally displaced (refugee)
-The golden passport holder
(under the table)
-The red "settler"
-The Red citizen with access to a blue passport
(Turkish Cypriot)

By pressing the following link you can better understand the game mechanics:

By creating a system, it became easier to assign tasks to guards and Border Patrol Agents, as they didn't need to actually understand the system in order to contribute with their tasks.
In this case it was actually important for them to not to understand the weight of what was actually happening, as this curiosity would have interfered with the experiment.

Props, Set, Signs, Scrpt.

Different passports given to the citizens after a series of questions.

Different stamps where given based on tasks completed.


The following stamps and designs where made with the help of Maritini Aresti, an artist from Cypus.

B stamps were given to those suspected to be bastards... aka the ones that tried to cross the border, or answered "yes" to having family members on both sides of the Palmanova.

The participants were prompted to go through each side's educational system.
This was achieved by coloring, taking tests, and handing flowers to the lost soldier.

Responsible for the stabling of the stamps were two teachers, one on each side.

PERFORMANCE:
As part of this project, I wrote a script, and, from within the green zone, communicated to the citizens information. This information varied from repeating the rules of the game, to stories about the city, to interacting with the audience through the cracks of the buffer zone.

The game took place in Maastricht, Netherlands, in 2024. 2,819.19 km out of situ. The presentation occurred at Landbouwbelang, a cultural centre in Maastricht, during a shared exhibition called "Displayced." "Displayced" was a collaboration between me and two other artists, Helena Linnert-Fuller and Halar Soomro.

The thematic and conceptual connections of our projects merged around ideas of space, belonging, and displacement. As games of geopolitics continue to displace us, we try to figure out identity, an integral part of being a "bastard." As people or "bastards," we found ourselves out of situ, in the Netherlands, away from our homelands, trying to navigate non-belonging, home, and our interpersonal and intercultural conflicts. Our ethnographic approach involved the recreation or reimagination of lost memories in and out of their contexts. By playing with familiar elements such as historical archives, signs, arrows, security, and surveillance, we wanted to reimagine familiar props and absurdify them, displacing them. Through sharing location, we allowed our works to build a space and navigate their own positionalities in this bastard context.

Collaboration with Helena

As we were both interested in researching hostile environments and urban objects discarded by the city, we decided to work together on a set design-like space.
A circular shape made of metal caged boxes was filled with jumbled objects from Landbouwbelang. This took two weeks of working in situ.
During Helena's presentation on the 27th, these objects were viewed from the inside. In my exhibition, we turned them inside out, and they functioned as the border between blue and red Palmanova.
In the space between, the green zone existed as a neutral space. This concept was inspired by the actual city of Nicosia, divided by the green line, a UN-monitored buffer zone. The main checkpoint of Nicosia, within the buffer zone, houses the Home for Cooperation, a place where "bastards" can meet without having to show their passports to the other side, thus creating a safe space for conflict mediation. In recreating this space, I held my after-talk as the first bi-communal meeting between the two sides.

It was important for us to work with the objects at hand. Helena aimed to exhibit a hostile urban environment, while I wanted to use those urban objects and materials to physically segregate the two sides, preventing communication and visibility between them. This was done to recreate the actual physical implications of the conflict for my audience. I have always been intrigued by what my government used to create a border, so I wanted to recreate that with similar scraps.

**During the Exhibitions:**

During the first exhibition (Halar Soomro’s), the audience experienced the view from up the stairs, which allowed a peek into the design of the Palmanova and the process. The Palmanova remained under construction for another week.

During the second exhibition (Helena’s), the audience got to experience what would soon be turned into a green space.