THE
PUBLIC
SCHOOL

Have you seen the movie Role-Models, or are you looking forward to the upcoming Knights of Badassdom and wonder "what's this whole larp thing?"

Live Action Role Playing, or larp, is rapidly becoming an amazing interactive medium of expression. Besides Lord of the Rings-type re-enactments, larp is used to train U.S. soldiers before Middle East deployment, as business training, and for education. Mock trials, Model U.N. clubs, disaster simulations, cops and robbers in the backyard or tea parties with stuffed animals are all part of the larp realm. Larp engages all five senses in what can be an intense physical, mental and even emotional workout. 

But how do you design or run a larp? What's it like to play-pretend in a structured setting with goals and rules? How can this be used to engage someone more than a book, movie, or video game?

Find out at the LARP Factory!

This is it. This is that moment beyond any polito-spatial recognition of what may or may not be putatively "Left" or "Right" or "LeftHand Path" or "RightHand Path" but that pale crux of which the putrefaction of the body must come to be acknowledged, assessed and dealt with. We are the first to recognize World Capitalism is over, Modernity is over, the New Middle Ages and its Latter Day Emperors awaits for its Righteous Moral Vanguard to bring down the Gold Host and assault its velvet chambers of mediocrity and excessive before the Heat-Death of the planet finalizes the Holocene Extinction Event and extinguishes Life.

First, a suitable definition of the risograph courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The risograph is a high-speed digital printing system manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation and designed mainly for high-volume copying and printing. Increasingly, Risograph machines have been commonly referred to as a RISO Printer-Duplicator, due to their common usage as a network printer as well as a stand-alone duplicator. When printing or copying multiple quantities (generally more than 20) of the same original, it is typically far less expensive per page than a conventional photocopier, laser printer, or inkjet printer. Printing historian Rick O'Connor has debated that the original, and thus correct, name for the device is RISSO and not RISO. This debate spawns from the notion that an extra 'S' is added because the inventor's wife found it more pleasing to the ears."

Participants would learn some massage techniques and the health benefits of massage, and then we do mutual massage in pairs and small groups.

Content:

The aim of this course would be to create a space in which children can help to radically reimagine the current world we live in.  What is a young person's vision for a truly transformative world?

Additionally a series of  questions regarding world issues could be asked exploring subjects such as food distribution, debt, industy and employment, interstellar space travel, climate change, renewable energy and war and peace.  Some initial collaborative research could be useful in finding the most successful ways to ask open ended queestions which would help to spark imaginative thinking.

Logisitics / Format:

The  workshop could exist as a collaboration between 6-12 year olds in the kids mediation workshops at Le Magasin and a decentralized group of children and parents tuned into SKype.  This could take place one afternoon for 1-2 hours, in June 2012.