18 Oct 2011

Chess with Duchamp, Make Your Move

Chess with Duchamp, Readymade Art

Make Your Move or Can You? Three fast computer called games will move you around the grid.
A Project by Holly Crawford

'…the metaphysical chess game called 'art history'…' -Adam Gopnik, New Yorker 6/27/11

What's your position? What do you want to be? Do you have a gambit?

We invite all comers to participate in, or observe, a game of chess with living chess persons. People will move around the big board on the floor. Two computers battle it out with your body at play. Come in costume, if you wish! Kings will sip champagne and others may sing or recite poetry in their little square.  Pawns  will be lightly kicked into the next square and then off the board by the nearest player that has more power. It's looks like a level playing field but everyone is not equal and technology has all the power in the end. All participation and participants will be documented.

'The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem. ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.'
-- Marcel Duchamp

Groups are welcome. Some props will be available, such as crowns and swords.
RSVP to chess@artcurrents.org

Anyone wishing to produce this project elsewhere may do so, so long as (1) there is no charge for the event; it is free; and (2) you to send information about place and time before the event , and documentation after the event, to Holly Crawford (chess@artcurrents.org)