The Game by Viviana González Méndez
This game by Viviana González Méndez comes from learning about how traditions, coming from rural and suburban context of popular Andean world, understand and create relationships with their surroundings. Distilled from these traditions is, especially, the idea that space is understood as a community of beings that are interwoven and in constant dialogue with each other. By this logic, there is no hierarchical difference between the human and other beings. But if we accept that places can be beings, then we should also include them as part of this community. And what surrounds us are not simply objects but living entities with which we could establish relations of reciprocity.
To imagine a spatiality understood in this way, this game proposes, as a first step, a change of perspective. It is about spatial experiences that focus on perception from within and from below, rather than about hegemonic ways that places are perceived from outside and from far away. This means that space is perceived from the experience of being there, from the closeness and attention necessary to pursue a dialogic relationship with what surrounds us. This suggested shift in perspective is also an invitation to return to the possibilities of one's own body and to have experiences in which the visual is not dominant. It makes way to focus on other senses.
What new experiences of spaces does this perspective offer? What kinds of images of spaces are possible? What kind of maps or cartographies? What new kinds of spaces could be produced by extending the experiences of this game into everyday life?
