No, Thank You: Games, Rules, and the Power of Refusal
Panel chaired by Danqi Cai
Description
This panel is rooted in the relationship between games and print media and is interested in “spoil-sports,” namely those who reject the game rules, and as a result, shatter the play-world. This panel asks the following questions: What are the rules in life in general, and art/print in particular? When are transgression to game rules and rejection to play generative rather than destructive? Print has the Power to renounce outmoded disciplinary boundaries and discriminatory practices. How can we harness this Power of Refusal to artistically advance the discipline and culturally build a sustainable future?
Historically, games and print media developed side-by-side. From the 15th-century Mamluk cards to Milton Bradley’s 19th-century The Checkered Game of Life, playing cards and board games are among the earliest, transcultural, popular print media. Both games and print media are transmedial and conducive to displaying technological advancement. As a 16th-century Italian game board morphs into Christopher Strachey’s 1951 Checkers game on the Ferranti Mark I computer, Albrecht Durer’s 1515 woodcut Rhinoceros is now ubiquitous online as pixels and IRL as ink dots on inkjet papers. (1)
Rules abound in games, and when rejected, the play-world collapses. The game is over. Historian Johan Huizinga calls those who dismiss the rules "spoil-sports" that "rob the play of its illusion.” Instead, the rule-breakers break the rules without renouncing them outright, thereby differing from the “spoil-sports” in their continued acknowledgment of the play-world. (2)
Rules are also ubiquitous in print media and our Human Condition, “the largest storyworld of all.” (3) In print, rules used to mandate perfect registration, identical editions, and pristine borders. In American life, rules used to call for segregation on buses, regulations on same-sex activities, and silence around sexual violence. Until someone says, No, Thank You.
Rooted in the relationship between games and print media and interested in “spoil-sports,” this panel asks the following questions: What are the rules in life in general, and art/print in particular? When are transgression to game rules and rejection to play generative rather than destructive? Print has the Power to renounce outmoded disciplinary boundaries and discriminatory practices. How can we harness this Power of Refusal to artistically advance the discipline and culturally build a sustainable future?
(1) Kelli Wood, “A History of Play in Print: Board Games from the Renaissance to Milton Bradley,” Center for Gaming Research, UNLV, Occasional Paper Series, 44 (2018): 1-24.
(2) Johan H Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Routledge, 1980), 11.
(3) Chris Crawford, Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling , Second edition (San Francisco, CA: New Riders, 2013), 80.
About the chair
Danqi Cai (b. 1996, China) received her BFA in Printmaking and Humanistic Studies from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2019. She is currently an MFA student in Printmaking at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Cai has shown nationally in juried exhibitions including at the Alper Initiative for Washington Art, Bradbury Art Museum, and International Print Center New York. She has been awarded the Best in Show award from the 2018 Four Rivers Print Biennial, the Muskat Studios Prize from The Boston Printmakers 2019 Biennial, and a residency at the Chautauqua School of Art. In 2020, she presented at the SECAC conference and was elected as a 2020–2022 Student Member-at-Large for the Mid American Print Council. In 2021, she chaired a panel at the Remote Contact Printmaking Symposium and held a solo exhibition in collaboration with a Philosophy Ph.D. student.
Panelists
Ivy Brenneman is an Indiana-based, Atlanta raised visual artist. She enjoys food, the absurd, human sexuality and all things detailed and delicate. Her creative research exists at the nexus of cut-paper, printmaking, drawing, computer aided design, installation and sculpture, interrogating the ways in which feminine bodies are objectified and othered within colloquial language. Through graphic imagery, dark humor, and unusual scale, she challenges this verbal objectification and encourages a greater critical dialog around societal sexism. Brenneman has a passion for teaching and extensive experience as a studio assistant, working for artists like Vik Muniz, Richard Fishman and Paul Myoda. She received her BA in Honors Visual Arts, German Studies and Creative Writing from Brown University in 2016, graduating magna cum laude, and is currently completing the final year of her MFA in Printmaking at Indiana University Bloomington, where she also serves as Associate Instructor of Basic Printmaking Media.
Amze Emmons is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. He received a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University and a MFA from the University of Iowa. His work has been exhibited widely in the US and abroad. He is an Associate Professor and printmaking program head at Tyler School of Art and architecture at Temple University.
Dana Potter is an artist, educator, and technologist. Her work reveals the connections between the real and online world through a mixture of traditional printmaking and biometric technologies. She received her MFA from the University of Tennessee Knoxville in Printmaking and is currently an Assistant Professor of Interactive Digital Studies at the University of Northern Iowa. Potter’s work has been exhibited in Portugal, Poland, Hungary, and in the United States at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio, Public Space One in Iowa City, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Shruti Shankar (b. Chennai, India) is a mixed-media artist working in print, drawing, and installation. She incorporates multi-disciplinary modes of working using large-scale fabric collages and wall drawings, investigating practices of looking, belonging, and connections to home, memory and identity. She holds her BFA in Studio Art from Denison University (2021). Her work has been included in group and solo shows within and outside the University. She is a recipient of the Vail Fine Arts Scholarship, the Osborne Fine Arts Scholarship and the Nan Nowik Memorial Award for Artistic Expression. She has conducted research in Studio Art through the Young Scholars Program and the Off Campus Scholars Program in 2019 and 2020. She has presented as an undergraduate speaker at the MAPC 2020 Remote Symposium and panelist at the Remote Contact Printmaking Symposium at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Most recently, she works as a Studio Fellow at the Columbus Museum of Art.
Time
3:45-5:15pm Friday
Location
Kent State University School of Art
Center for Visual Arts (CVA)
Room 165
Wearing face coverings and being up-to-date on Covid-19 vaccinations are strongly recommended at this location.