We lovingly devise your public flop is a card game developed by artists Chao-ying Rao and Rachel McBrinn during a month-long residency at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow in February 2024.
The project began with a shared desire to think through the subjectivities and the power relationships we each navigate as artists, workers, and individuals. In particular, making space to think and talk about how we operate as individuals within organisational or collective work, and the conflicting needs and desires often felt in these settings.
The game that unfolded is an ode to the narrative of tarot, the lure of competitive play, office away days and team building exercises, and local art world gossip. A space for conversation and reflection opens in the safety of fiction and satirical release.
Following its development and testing in Glasgow, the game has travelled to Shanghai via artist Gordon Douglas who facilitated a session with the Curatorial Fellows of the De Ying Foundation. More locally the game has been played by West Lothian creatives, hosted by West Lothian ARC and Firefly Arts. If you or your organisation would like to play the game, please get in touch to arrange a session.
The project was also featured in LEAP Magazine China in Summer 2024, edited by Xiaoyi Nie 聂小依.
The game is the tool and play is the research. We lovingly devise your public flop is a provocation, a framework to be adapted and shaped by the players and the context in which it is played. It can expose our complicities and desires, and the unfair systems we unwittingly uphold or repair, a structure in which sometimes the only option you are left with is to walk away.
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Detail from feature in LEAP Magazine, Summer 2024 issue. More about the game
To begin the game, players are assigned a role within a fictional arts organisation and allocated a set of resources which they must use to solve problems as they arise, often requiring two players to solve a problem together. The objective is to solve all problems without depleting your own resources or the resources of the other players. And of course, to keep the organisation stocked up on morale, time, and money.
West Lothian ARC Artist café session, Bathgate, September 2024. Photos by Louise Burns.