WORKSHOP: Beirut, Lebanon 2005

workshop: PLAYSPACE location: Borj El Barajni Camp, Beirut, Lebanon participants: Children of Beit Atfal Assomoud sponsor: A.M. Qattan Foundation and Norwegian People's Aid facillitators: Reem Charif and Mohamad Hafda (Febrik) and Wan S. Sophonpanich (openspace) date: July 2005 with special thanks to Ajial Gallery

Workshop summary

The workshop was composed of two parts. The first focused on research and used photography, text and drawing as the main mediums for locating the children’s secret/invented games made possible by the camp’s spatial and social environments. The children began brainstorming through a series of visual mind-maps that drew a picture of what these games might be. The children then used disposable cameras to photograph and document their processes and spaces of play; this included interviews with spectators and players (family, friends, neighbours). Once back at the centre the children translated their findings into spatial and narrative drawings that explored the ‘elements of play’: the spaces occupied by their body movements; the physical elements needed for the game (tall wall, hiding space, an open window etc); the human elements needed for the game (the number of players (do they all know they are playing? their age, time of day ...etc); and the memory elements (where does the game come from? How was it inspired? What happened before you invented it etc); they also indicated the sequence of play and the rules of the games.

These extensive manuals (collated through Text and photographic mind maps) were made into small books narrating the story of the game whilst simultaneously introducing the social practices that inspired them. The children worked individually on this part of the project.

The second part of the workshop focused on inventing new games that explored the camp’s spatial structure and its ability to generate playing environments. In groups of 3s and 4s the children worked on collages and models that collated their own games and questioned the spaces that hosted them; this in turn initiated new hybrid games made from their individual elements as well as from the elements of the space itself.

The new games were both physical and spatial; we built a play object (an installation of a topography of chairs), a transient play space (a transformative frame able to create interior play space that vary in size according to their context in the camp) and a public photographic narrative (a sequence of photographic shadows that collectively project a story onto different walls in the camp).

The groups:

The Chair Group:

This group was particularly successful in utilizing the collage exercise and in working together, their common collage had distinct images of piles/collections of chairs that created new types of spaces so that they were encouraged to play with form and then test them briefly using the centre’s brown plastic chairs. They had discussions and brainstorms about what kind of game they would like to create: ‘active’ was a main theme as were ‘climbing’, ‘jumping’ and ‘sound’.

The children used found and broken chairs and began to put them together with the aim of creating a new game. The work was hands-on, using a combination of woodwork and papier-mache. The installation came about slowly as the children took each chair on board, transforming and personalising it with their own elements of play; They worked together and with their facilitators on each other’s pieces, continuously testing them and seeing whether they worked/looked/sounded right. The installation created a new topography of play where activities (jumping, climbing, throwing) took place on different vertical levels and offered different degrees of physical balance and stability.

The different chairs included the “story chair”, which was enveloped with layers of narratives and wrapped with notepad paper and newspaper cuttings; the improvised story-time on the roof were recorded on the surfaces of the chair. The “bell chair” included a “noisy pocket” to collect the paper planes using bells and flexible paper; the aim was to formalize the competition between the planes, ensuring that the winner is now heard rather than seen (as previously it was too fast to be measured). The “tall chair” was tailored to very light yet able climbers and created a sense of balance whilst looking fragile and elated. The “spring chair”, a hybrid of a spring bed and a trampoline, is a ‘noise’ machine generate by our body actions (different speeds/types of jumping); it transformed the feelings of jumping on one’s bed into a public and formal event. The chairs fit together so as to appear as one object.

The installation was tested on sites that offered further vertical layering, enabling new players to watch from a new vantage point or to join from outside the installation. It also, co-incidentally, mimicked the men’s social gatherings on chairs in the camp’s “pavements” or house porches; they were happy to take part in the event and found the new multi-functional chairs entertaining and creative.

The Frame and Pocket Group:

These two groups started independently but soon merged their installations.

The frame groups’ collages were very experimental; they explored possibilities of merging the children’s different elements. An interest in the window as an apparatus of viewing was developed as a collective, questioning ideas of inside and outside and in turn the relationship between the viewer and the view. Wood beams of different lengths were assembled using various flexible joints with the aim of fragmenting and re-constructing the ‘frame’ and manipulating the concept of a window. The new flexible and transformative frames were put together to create a new framework, one that defined a space that folds and unfolds in relation to the body positions of its inhabitants; so that the activities within the framed space became very important.

Simultaneously, the pocket group were developing their own collages; they were the most intuitive workers, less interested in analysis and more into making things directly. They experimented with all sorts of materials, especially large-scale multi-media prints using photography and fabric. Their main elements and their elaborate group collages suggested a focus on ideas of ‘pockets’, spaces for hiding/hidden spaces/camouflage. The three-dimensional experiments began with building tailored cardboard pockets, the shape of which was informed by the children’s bodies in hiding positions and by specific sites in the camp; they aimed to create an invisible pocket which can house their bodies whilst still going un-noticed on the site. They photographed different corners in the camp as a cover for the cardboard so as to camouflage what is the real context and what is the image on the ‘pocket’ in front of it. They produced three main collages over-layed over the pocket back drop; they were inspired by their own elements - flowers from different gardens and terraces, kitchen utensils from private and commercial venues and different children playing games in the alleyways of the camps.

A link between the explorations of the two groups became evident as they were both focused on body positions and on ideas of what we see and don’t see. The pocket group built the skin rapping the folding framework of the ‘frame group’, creating layers of stories as the skin surface expanded and collapsed with the movement of the frame which in turn mimicked the intention of ‘hiding’ and finding’. What became most apparent was the transient space transformed through the movement of the children’s bodies within the different frame position - including the new limitations created by the collage surfaces. So that the exercise was then abstracted to questions what new types of games or events can take place in the different positions of the new frame?
And also what are the different contexts that can affect the shape of the frame itself and in turn the activities within it?

The frame and its players were tested in different site conditions, a very narrow alleyway and a larger open space within the camp’s maze, in each space the folding and the activities changed, inviting new viewers and new interactions.

The Shadow Group:

Bringing their words together and using their group collages as inspiration, the group began to experiment with shadows (since it is the main elements in most of their games). Writing a story (in line with wajiha’s game of creating shadow plays) that started with tantoori’s race with the sun, they used elements from their different games to write a scenario that is expressed solemnly through shadows. They used their bodies and props of the sun as the main shadow actors.

The group decided to take the following roles:
Actors: hana, wajiha, and m.tantoori, director:Hiba, photographer:Alaa, props: everyone

The shadow story:
A boy and his sister were walking with their mother in the camp’s market… they looked up and noticed the sun following them … the more they walked, the more she followed, the faster they ran, the faster she raced. Realising their shadows were also in the race, they ran even faster and it seemed possible to just win their shadows but was there hope in winning the sun?
They decided to get rid of the sun; they lured her in and then ate her. But it became so dark, that they could not see anything, not even their shadows, they looked and looked but they were nowhere to be found. The only players up for racing were their reflections in the mirror, but even they were too faint to see and could not really run too far. Exhausted and bored in the new dark world, they called upon the sun to rise again, they opened their mouth and sang her out; she made her way back to the sky as they waved her goodbye and returned to their races.

With a mock-up storyboard photographed in the centre’s roof, the group reduced the story to 10 main scenes; they then headed out to find good sites for them, keeping in mind the needed light conditions for the story line. They located their sites and took 10 clear shots that represented 10 pages of their story.
The invention of a new game came next, using Hana’s ‘searching’ element; The new game used the walls of the camp as the pages of the book, sticking large posters of each scene on the walls of each of the 10 sites and writing the narrative in chalk. They left clues for the players to follow their way around from one page to the other (arrows and text). The players (new children) began a race to see who could put the story together first, running from one alley to the next in search of clues and chapters.

The Exhibition:

All games were played by new players and tested in more than one site; they were also, along with the rest of this year’s work, exhibited at Ajial Art Gallery in Hamra. The opening night included powerpoint projection of the work process and improvised presentations by the children about their games, main elements and process of development.