Student scavenger hunt reenacts protests

Reenacting history becomes a platform for launching genuine experiences, blurring the line between games and reality.

Re:Activism, a scavenger hunt held from 11:30 a.m. to early evening this Saturday around Philadelphia, had 15 participants. It was a collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Kelly Writers House and the Urban Studies Department with a grant from the Provost’s Office for the Year of Games.

Teams used smartphones to document their completion of challenges at sites of historic protest and activism across the city.

The 18 sites spanned diverse causes and chronological dates, stretching from the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society to the current Occupy Philadelphia movement. Players’ challenges included interviewing Occupy protestors, chalking gay rights slogans on sidewalks in front of Old City Hall and staging their own protests.

Coordinator Jenna Weiss, Speigel Fellow at the ICA, described Re:Activism as an “out-of-the-box event” where participants had an opportunity to see the city in a different light.

Colleen Macklin, creator of the game and director of PETLab in New York — which outlines the game for other cities to adapt, was present. “Games create active, not just passive, learning,” she explained. “Past struggles really highlight how far we’ve come. An ulterior motive is to show people how to use smartphones to document events, to become citizen-journalists.”

Designer of the game Thomson Guster, a 2010 College graduate who worked at the Writers House, described his role as “the person who filled in the blanks for Philadelphia itself” using Macklin’s framework. He views “reactivating people’s interest in going outside and yelling things” as a goal of the game.

After the game, participants and coordinators convened at Writers House for a critical discussion and sharing of experiences. Urban Studies professor Andrew Lamas led the discussion. “The game actually enabled the kind of genuine relationship that we don’t experience in casual, anonymous conversation with people in a public space. That’s a really interesting contradiction,” he noted.

The Occupy Philadelphia movement inspired a heightened experience for many participants. The game “really lowers the barrier — going in and getting active,” said Vladimir Zykov, a 2007 Penn graduate. Yet, he noted that “games are sort of outside the arena of life … and this is all like an alternative set of rules.” The amazing result of playing the game was that it led to real experiences.

“It makes it seem like a viable way to get things changed,” College freshman Kenna O’Rourke concluded as she described her team’s encounter with the Occupy movement. “We were videoing, and I and my teammates were very good about going out and distributing flyers,” she said, referring to one of the game’s tasks. “And we were sort of integrated with the movement, and it felt like we were actually involved. It makes the idea of being part of an actual, ongoing protest must more acceptable.”

Re:Activism has been played in New York, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minn., Beijing and Budapest, Hungary.

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