balls for all

created in collaboration with Sarah Wagner and Stratton Coffman in spring 2019, Collective Architecture Studio

exhibited in 12th Bienal Internacional de Arquitetura de São Paulo in "Sharing Trainers" by Critical Broadcasting Lab, led by Ana Miljački, graphics and exhibition support by Trevor Herman Hilker and Gideon Schwartzman

exhibited in 2019 Seoul Biennale in MIT Collective Architecture Studio's "Retro(utopian) Alternatives for Belgrade"

(Retro)Utopian Alternatives for Belgrade cultivated a collective studio and examined notions of common authorship, using socialist Yugoslavia as its precedent. Throughout the semester, we interrogated this concept of collectivity in three experiments that include: the mash-up devices/wearables, (retro)museum proposals for Usce Park, and housing alternatives for Belgrade.

The way in which we organized ourselves as a collective - and often disorganized ourselves - offered new modalities for functioning in a society that was physically removed from the context in which we were operating; however, through archiving and in the spirit of collectivizing our workflow, we interrogated this contemporary nostalgia for a former socialist Yugoslavia.

Balls for All is an interactive garment/game constituted from principles of Yugoslavian collective self-management.

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contents

five body sleeves

one playing field

five objective holes

one pit of entropy

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rules

body sleeves must be worn at all times

if the ball ends up in the wrong hole, everyone loses

everyone wins or everyone loses

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versions of gameplay

collectives, for beginners

five players without visual impairment

objective: collectively, all players strive to guide all five balls into the pit of entropy

the foreman

four players with visual impairment + one player without visual impairment

objective: collectively, four players rely on the audible instructions from the lead player to get one ball in each of the five objective holes

equal distribution

five players without visual impairment

objective: collectively, all players rely on one another to get one ball in each of the five holes to win

good will

four players without visual impairment + one player visually impaired

objective: collectively all players strive to get a ball in the hole of the person who is blindfolded