LIQUID DEPENDENCIES
Role-playing game
22 April, 2—8 p.m. (in German)

 

“Liquid Dependencies: What does a decentralised caring society look like” (2021- present) is a multiplayer role-playing game for 10 players in which they build long-term mutual caring relationships. In the course of the game, the players will be assigned to characters which they need to bring alive with their own experiences. Over the course of 4 to 5 hours, the players will “spend” 20 to 30 years of life together and cope with a series of personal and social events. What kind of society will these players eventually create?

Since February 2021, the game has gone through sixteen internal testing and twelve public testings at the Shanghai Biennale and Dolan Museum, attracting more than 200 participants and counting. During which the game incubated a 30 dedicated ReUnion Troupe. When people play the game, they often can’t help but project themselves and their personal value as they make decisions and weave stories for their characters in the game. The diverse definition of gender and relationships, the value of care labour, the meanings of life, death, and wealth, as well as a series of social controversies gradually surface as the mini-society progresses two to three decades in the game. In the meantime, the co-creators of the game have been constantly reflecting on the boundaries and responsibilities of the platform, such as the unavoidable dilemmas of privacy and care ethics should the system be landed in real life.

Liquid Dependencies (DE) is co-created by Liquid Dependencies Theory (YIN Aiwen, Yiren ZHAO and Zoe ZHAO) and Elli Kuruş, a version begin with the reflection of the social reality in Leipzig and Germany at large and now will land in Cologne. At Temporary Gallery Liquid Dependencies invites people to explore together peer-to-peer caring relationships as the cornerstone for a commons-oriented, caring society.

The game session is free to play. To play the game, please email info@temporarygallery.org. You will receive a welcome email as confirmation soon after.

Available game sessions:
4 March, 12-6 p.m.
25 March, 12-6 p.m.
15 April, 12-6 p.m.
22 April, 2-8 p.m.

After playing the game, players will have the opportunity to learn more about the game and are invited to join into the co-creation of a Cologne-version and become part of the host community.

Yin Aiwen is a practicing designer, artist, theorist, strategist and project developer who uses writing, system design and time-based art to examine the social impact of planetary communication technologies. She advocates relationship-focused design as a strategy to redesign, re-engineer and reimagine the relationship between technology and society. Besides publishing and exhibiting internationally, she also works as a strategist and researcher for cultural institutions. Yin obtained an MFA degree from the Design department of Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, and a BFA in Visual Communication from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology. She is a Graduation Curatorial tutor at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures (AKV | St.Joost) and a researcher of the “Autonomy in Art and Design” division in Avans University in the Netherland. Her notable projects such as ReUnion Network, Urbanizing the digital, and Commons. Art has received financial support from NWO, Creative Industries Fund NL, Mondriaan Fonds, Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst and more. Yin’s work has been discussed and shown at renowned venues such as Shanghai Biennale re:publica, Transmediale, Art Basel Miami, Het Nieuwe Instituut etc. She received a research fellowship from The New Normal programme of Strelka Institute (RU, 2017), Art Center South Florida (US, 2017), ZK/U Berlin (DE, 2019), and Trust (DE, 2019). She is the recipient of INFORM prize for Conceptual Design in 2019.

https://www.yinaiwen.info/
https://www.reunionnetwork.org/

Image
Yin Aiwen: Player receive a Personal Event card; Liquid Dependencies at Dutch Design Week; photo: Tom Doms

Funding and support:
Mondriaan Fund
Stiftung Kunstfonds and NEUSTART KULTUR
Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen
Kunststiftung NRW
Creative Europe
DANCE ON TOUR Austria
With the kind support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Kulturamt der Stadt Köln
Deltax contemporary
Hotel Chelsea

The event is part of a larger endeavor called "Islands of Kinship: A Collective Manual for Sustainable and Inclusive Art Institutions”, in which CCA Temporary Gallery works with six international partner institutions: Jindrich Chalupecky Society (Prague), Latvian Center for Contemporary Art (Riga), Frame Contemporary Art Finland (Helsinki), Julius Koller Society (Bratislava), Faculty of things that can't be learned (Skopje) and Stroom den Haag (The Hague). Islands of Kinship is co-funded by the EU Program Creative Europe.