Ludic Liberation Lab is a container for practicing Ludic Liberation.
The Ludic Liberation Lab is hosted at Incite Seminars, an anarchist education collective creating rigorous and rebellious learning through in-person & online events, ongoing study groups, and educational experiments. The Ludic Liberation Lab is an educational experiment.
In the Ludic Liberation Lab we
Make Theory Into Practice Through Play.
Ludic Liberation Lab is a place to Research & Develop new Ludic Liberation game concepts and mechanics.
Ludic Liberation Lab meets every 2nd Thursday of the month, 6-7:30pm Eastern Time. Labs are virtual so virtually anyone anywhere in the world can join!
Every Lab has an existential theme and a Principal Investigator (PI) who leads the session. Past Labs have played with: Self, Time, Change, Chance, Knowing, Anti-Racism, Paradigm Shifts, Desire, Rules, Memory & More! Future Labs may play with Ferality/Domesticity, Quantum Entanglements, Decomposition, Surveillance, Symbiosis, Aging, who knows!
Everything can be played with! Our Principal Investigators (facilitators with a playful research question) have included performance artists, immersive experience designers, and magical masters of ceremonies.
After the lab, experimental results are analyzed and findings are shared via the Lab Report.
UPCOMING LABS:
May 12, 2022 - Solarpunk Futures
PAST LABS:
April 14, 2022 - Arcology World
March 10, 2022 - The Transition Year
February 10, 2022 - Word Games
January, 2022 - Games of Order
December 9, 2021 - SURREALPUNK! w/ Jon Hook and Michael Laub
November 11, 2021 - Your Fortunate Way w/ Janet Howe (PLAYING WITH POSSIBILITIES)
October 14, 2021 - Playing with MEMORY
September 9, 2021 - Playing with SYNCHRONICITY
August 12, 2021 - VERSIONS, a Creative Writing Game
June 10, 2021 - Playing with TRANSLATION
May 13, 2021 - Playing with ATTENTION
May 5, 2021 - Playing with WASTE (again!) - Euro-friendly time
April 8, 2021 - Playing with WASTE
March 11, 2021 - BODY LANGUAGE w/ Thirdspace Somatics
February 11, 2021 - FAILING AT GENDER w/Indigo Esmonde
January 14, 2021 - Playing with Our Best-Laid Plans
December 10, 2020 -CONVERSATION GAMES w/ Aaron Finbloom
November 12, 2020 - Playing with RULES
October 8, 2020 - MIND GAMES w/ Sir Lyra Hill
September 10, 2020 - Getting Birdy w/KOSMOLOGYM
August 13, 2020 - Playing with DESIRE
July 9, 2020 - Philosophy Games w/IKANTKOAN
June 11, 2020 - Anti-Racism Slumber Party
May 14, 2020 - Becoming Sovereignly Useless (playing with KNOWING)
April 9, 2020 - Playing with Quarantine TIME
March 12, 2020 - Chance, Change & the Eternal Return
February 6, 2020 - Prefiguring the Post-Capitalist Playground. . .
Ludic Liberation Lab Rules:
We play to remember we are always playing. This reminds us that we have have a choice: to enact old scripts or make new rules.
It is called a lab because we conduct experiments in relating. These experiments can and might fail. We welcome failures because they often produce the most useful data, because it reveals what we took for granted.
The Ludic Liberation Lab is not a "controlled" or "unbiased" or "objective" space. It is a container for testing, observing, and learning from our collective reactions and for containing our potential explosions.
Everyone who joins the lab is both a participant and a researcher of play and liberation. You can use the space to ask your own questions, conduct private experiments, and draw your own conclusions. Or you can go with the flow of another’s investigation and see what happens!
Your personal results will vary depending on both what you want to investigate and what you are willing to put in.
All games are inherently manipulative and liberatory play can paradoxically make us more vulnerable to coercion. Remember that you can stop playing at any time. You are the master of your game.
If you are interested in being updated about upcoming labs and receive Lab Reports from our experiments, fill out this form.