Utopian Urbanism 2.0 (for over-8s)

The Madrid immigrant quarter, Lavapiés, lies right at the heart of the Spanish capital, yet has the flair of a port neighbourhood. There are so many people from different backgrounds flung together higgledy-piggledy there, and the social panorama seems so bewildering to some when viewed from the outside: Arabs, black Africans, Caribbean mulattoes, Mexican indígenas, Berbers. The street life is a cheerful festival of cultures on a pleasant, sunny afternoon, but a stroll through Lavapiés also takes you to corners with a less upbeat air. Discarded furniture and household appliances stand around next to a wastepaper basket, but might also be the traces of a stop-gap dwelling; a public square is nothing but a stretch of cement with a sapling set into it; a youth hostel entrance looks like a cage in a zoo; and the central crossroads, with shops set around it and a sort of plaza, is disfigured by cars, but also by buildings. Madrid is certainly very densely built-up but some parts of this district look as if the unattractive buildings, crammed much too close together, have simply been put up willy-nilly.
The urban space of Lavapiés is redefined in the computer game »Border Games«. The carefully simulated setting is more spacious than its counterpart is in reality and the figures, inspired by people from the neighbourhood, move about light-footed, such as for example the rubbish disposal teams or security men, their arms swinging back and forth in a relaxed rhythm as if they were vogueing. The action turns around the central square by the main crossroads. In the game it takes on the status of a public arena, offering enough space for any conceivable moves. The virtual figures are drawn into a dialogue through texts and questions, the players are enticed to let down their guard and encouraged to determine the course of the game by responding to the questions. Aimed especially at children and young people who live in Lavapiés, the interactive potential of »Border Games« gives users an opportunity to imbue their everyday environment with a significance that leaves the schemata of material reality far behind.
The game is written from the perspective of a Moroccan immigrant called Abdullah. Before joining La Fiambrera Obrera, the group of artists that developed this game, he worked in his homeland in rural factories that manufactured counterfeit products. Now that he lives in Madrid, he sometimes sells fake Real Madrid fan articles in the Rastro market – an activity with a touch of the subversive about it, given the enormous power of the Real Madrid brand. In addition, Abdullah also works as a DJ and supplies the dozen or so artists in the group with ideas and stories from his life. Even although the game is based on his wide-ranging experiences, La Fiambrera Obrera actually came up with the idea of this interactive format in Los Angeles. Whilst the group was at the California Institute of the Arts on a grant programme, they were inspired by what they saw in the desolate downtown area and in slum-like districts, such as Southeast L.A., to create a work exploring the problematic issue of socially marginalised figures. The topic of migrants clamoured to be included after they got home; as everyone knows, the subject is a perennial hot topic in politics and the mass media in Spain. The game format proved to be the best solution, as the games market is omnipresent in children’s and young people’s day-to-day lives, and alternative games were in short supply. A study the artists launched among the target group in Lavapiés also revealed this to be the most popular format.
The visuals of the game they created are reminiscent at times of utopian town planning from the sixties.1 Some tableaux depict black Africans and Moroccan immigrants in Lavapiés, looking like figures beamed into the urban landscapes, as if they had tumbled from some distant planet into the midst of everyday Iberian life. Cut out of photos and set into the computer animated space as a montage, their contours are outlined in bold with electronic fluorescent markers. The contrast between photographic aesthetics and digital realism underscores their alien status, which however also endows these images with a certain utopian charm. The montages are reminiscent of architectural blueprints familiar from architecture, from Archigram to MVRDV – designs that have always attempted to create spaces of possibility. Whilst the architectural utopians were tinkering away at futuristic visions with similar montages, the »Border Games« images, although they do also have a somewhat sci-fi flavour about them, blend this with a strikingly dystopian note. Here contrasts clash and the problems of a polarised society unleash their energy. Applying a similar cutting and pasting approach, boats crammed with refugees running aground on the Spanish coast are displaced into a Madrid Underground station, whilst uniformed soldiers patrol in the foreground. The latter, along with the refugees, recur over and over again, taking up positions at strategic points like tin soldiers. This counter pole sets up a field of tensions that the immigrants move through as pieces in the game. As the rough outlines and contours suggest, everything is modular, everything can be composed anew.
This aesthetic appeals to urban planning researchers. However, and this is something we shouldn’t forget: the target group is children and young people. Utopian Urbanism 2.0 (for over 8s) – one could paraphrase this subject-matter in these terms, echoing film titles and ratings. However, as a conglomerate of signs the aesthetic of the game plays with historical references from utopian architectural history, draws on adult tastes and has the interactive bonus of encouraging children to get involved. An impossible mix? Not at all. Yet how does this blend find justification for its existence? Does it stem from the fact that children’s imaginations are certainly not as innocent as adults often believe and are much closer to the world of adults than one would wish? Or is it because utopian town planning has always had something child-friendly about it, and has always had a lot in common with the parallel world children and young people create as they extend the spaces of possibility in their everyday lives with their imaginations – when they dream themselves away to another, better place, whose existence can generate productive friction with the reality surrounding them?
There is not ONE answer to these questions. That does not however mean that are NO answers. The truth lies somewhere between the two. That is probably what constitutes the particular charm of this project. It is not just that boundaries blur. They also become visible. That also holds true for the borders that run through the everyday life of socially marginalised figures, as well as to the boundary lines set up to demarcate aesthetic projects, so often simply maintained unquestioned.

http://www.bordergames.org