Part two of my discombobulated KP experience, we will continue in the format of an almost stream of consciousness. Hope it makes sense, but at least it’s helpful for me.

09.00 – 11.00
– Wake up with still a light buzz from the day before, but not feeling all that bad despite the small amount of sleep. Slow breakfast still waking up before heading to the first keynotes.
– The keynote speaks started the four thematic sessions rules, rooms, roles and bodies each was followed by groups of talks workshops a the so called co-creative sessions, more about this later

– First talk is by Brody Condon. I’m not sure what the point was, but it was an interesting thought experiment of how simple can you make larp. From rocks just lying there to dead bodies and plants and slowly adding more and more until we came to fully fledged larp. always cool to hear people talk about larp, that has an artist background.

– Second talk: By my new hero J-Mac, a transgender female to male performer and stand up comedian. I have no notes from this talk just remember a sensation of being pulled along in a rush of words and laughter (need to find the talk online and watch it again.) This is a man with a lot on his heart, and luckily I got to hear more later on.

– Talk nr. 3: Hanne Grasmo, who proposes that when larp is viewed as art the bounders for what is safe are different and we should be less afraid of doing hard things. Or so I think. It’s was a bit like watching Birdman, I could feel this was clever, but I’m not sure I understood it. And afterwards I felt that it sparked a good deal debate, which is always good.

11.00 – 14.00
– First workshop: 2 player yoga, the organizer, Ebba Petrén had noticed that yoga is a one player game, so what happens if you start doing this together, can we use it in larp or workshops? Was an lose and interesting first look into what yoga can be used for. In groups of two we slowly created our own short routine of exchanged between pressure and support positions. Slowness and awareness of body and others bodies was keywords. Could be really interested use in workshops, I need to think more about this.

– First co-creative session, while most of us had been to talks or workshops those that had an idea to do something, was inspired to explore a question from one of the kay notes, or just wanted to create something unknown for and with others had meet and developed a range of spontaneous sessions with very different content and format, then when the rest of us were done, we could go to a wall and see what the others had come up with and join in on one of the sessions. This was brilliant. I could sadly only go to two of these.

– First one was: how to wear you character on your sleeve and was all about what tools we could come up with in making different character traits visible for other players and what potential challenges this could help solve. A very loose session where we just talked and brainstormed. But we were all so caught up in it that we went to lunch together and continued talking.

14.00 – 15.00
– Time went on quickly, on the way to the gymnasion (KP was this year called the Knudepunkt village as they used several venues, so one for social activities and parties, two for talks and workshops and two for sleeping.) I meet up with the always awesome Åslaug one of the organizers from the summer school and I ended up telling her a lot about my shyness and self awareness and how I used role play to deal with this. Strange how KP can get you to spill out your heart. thanks for listening.

– Wanted to go to a physicality workshop I knew Jannick ran. Had talked to him about it the evening before. But sadly I got lost and ended up no where near it when things started. So looked around and popped in on a presentation of a book called “The Birth of LARP in the Arab world”.

– Waow what a project, what a book. A few years ago a group of norwegians and palestinians went together to bring larps to the most unlikely place: Palestine and the palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. It raises the question: why on earth would the people there spend time on something as silly as larp, when their situation is so hard?

– They gave this answer: “Because it’s better to light a candle even for a short while, than to curse the darkness all the time” They have also run a game in Finland that simulated the situation in Palestine, as if it had happened in Finland. I so want that game in Denmark, we need it right now.

15.00 – 16.00
– Second round of keynote talks this time around the theme “rooms”. First was by Signe Hertel. It was about how you can influence play by how you design rooms, something I have heard Oliver talk about before, but her words was still interesting she had a good divide of paths – influences play by how players can move through the play area, objects – basically chekhov’s gun: if it’s there they will use it, and space – how is it built up, if theres chairs people will sit down, if there’s not people will move around more..

– Next: Martin Nielson talked about the chamberlarp revolution, and is was a proud moment when Black Box Horsens was namedropped in this talk. And I agree this is really where a lot of stuff is happening right now. This is the point where roleplay meets an old passion I thought I had left behind: the theatre, but this feels so much more like me.

– The last was by Martin Ericsson and in my notes I wrote: “what will the players be doing? If you can’t answer that, you have a problem.” “Physical action is the cement for immersion and it’s connected to the placebo effect which we don’t understand.” A lot of interesting thoughts, not yet sure how to use it.

That’s it for now, tomorrow the rest of friday.