"Can you feel the spill?" - project by NAC Serbian a-i-r's

Published on Tuesday, 13 August 2013 13:49

Can you feel the spill? is a mental, environmental, and socio-political board game; a micro-social practice and a piece of theory all rolled into one. It is conceived as a turn-based strategy game for two players, which deals with a 'glocal' ecological issue of offshore oil drillings and its environmental impacts.

The board game is firmly tied to a specific Neringa issue that explores the /potencial/ impact of the Kravtsovskoye /D-6/ oilfield on the UNESO World Heritage site of the Curonian Spit. It is a detailed game system that stimulate the decisions and processes inherent to the management body of the D-6 oilfield - the Oil Tzar (player 1) and the Environmentalist (player 2).

The primary object of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and in so doing, eliminate the other player. By using a playful/ironic language and a conceptual framework, most of the mechanics/strategies in the game are chosen to reflect the notions of subjectivity and the capitalistic power formations. The board game is therefore an Ecological praxis (Guattari, 136), a mind-game that creates new solidarities, creative and personal-ethical alternatives. It refocuses the goals of the emancipatory struggle against the capitalistic power: it doesn't take up a position of an absolute external opposition, but rather confronts it on the mental ecology of daily life - it invites you to play!

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You're also welcome to download a more elaborate text on Can you feel the spill? by Andrea Palasti.

Here you can see more pictures and download the game.

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Les Mislerebles are miserable rebels. It is an informal artistic group/community and a movement from Serbia that is dedicated to creating/using /digital/ games for social change. Les Mislerebles are interested in exploring, working with and commenting on 'glocal'socio-economical issues of the underprivileged/subaltern, geopolitics and ecology.

Les Mislerebles are using micro-political and micro-social practices, new solidarities, while at the same time applying new aesthetic and analytical methodology to foster new/alternative subjectivities. Working with board games and/or digital navigation applications, Les Mislerebles are making subversive games that play with the player’s expectations.   

Initiator of Les Mislerebles is Isidora Todorovic /theorist&artist/ in collaboration with Andrea Palasti /artist & independent curator/ and Luka Ranisavljevic /programmer/