TAG invites you to this academic year’s first 5a7. We will be play-testing and discussing Aaron Finbloom’s Philosophy Conversation Game.
The Philosophy Conversation Game is a game that facilitates a philosophical conversation while making explicit and interactive conversational structure and methodology. The game is played as two players converse while a third person, the conversation guide, visually maps the conversation and provides written and structural cues to guide the conversation. This guide acts as a “conversation therapist” who helps the conversation stay balanced, move in interesting directions, clarify word meanings and advance deeper into a subject. Before the game begins the players chose from six different philosophers each of which has special conversational “powers” which can be used throughout the game to alter the game play in your favor. (for example: one of the Foucault cards reads: “Radically alter the power dynamics of this game for 2 minutes”). The goal of the game is to generate an interesting and lively dialogue in a way that affords an analysis of the method of conversation while it is occurring.
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, performance artist, musician and co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT), an artist/thinker residency program and experimental college. Much of Finbloom’s creative practice functions as an attempt to expand the scope of philosophy’s pedagogy via structured conversations, dialogical games, improvisational scores, contemplative audio guides and performative lectures. Finbloom has taught philosophy at Suffolk County Community College, curated dozens of courses playing with radical pedagogy for SMT, and led numerous interactive workshops at places which include: EMERGE Residency Program, The Performance Philosophy Conference, Elsewhere, Topological Media Lab, Senselab, matralab, and The Darling Foundry. He holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Art from SUNY Stony Brook and currently a PhD candidate in Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University with advisers Sandeep Bhagwati Erin Manning, Nathan Brown.
WHAT? Gameplay and discussion
WHEN? October 4th, Thursday from 5pm to 7pm
WHERE? TAG Lab (Concordia, EV 11.435, 1515 SteCatherine W., Montreal)
WHO? everyone is welcomed