Dear Friends of the Magical, the Surprising, the Weird and the Real:
Over here at Magically Real HQ, we keep an eye out for the thing that sparks us — the thing that makes us want to think, write, talk, and make work. Also teach. Also speak out when necessary. Also do laundry. We are always looking for the thing that makes us feel more alive by saying/showing/doing something where we have what philosopher Hans Gadamer calls the spark of recognition — the “this is you!” moment. Roland Barthes, queer post-structuralist would call it more simply the “pleasure of the text.”
This morning I had that experience. Thanks to a brilliant mutual friend, I follow the twitter feed of Porpentine — who has been mentioned on this blog before. Porpentine makes avantgarde videogames. She’s a genius.
Her latest offering is a sort of demonic poem-game about high-school girls, called LOVE IS ZERO.
You can read about it here.
And you can play it here.
How do I feel after playing it? I feel great right now because something awful has been named. Something that circulates in the relationships between women and girls, between girls and girls, between generations of women, between women at work, women at the grocery store, and women in families and conventions and schools. When the truth is named, we get to feel less burdened by it. We get to ask questions about it. And whatever we decide — the ickiness has less power because it is out there. On the screen.
When the truthy is stretched out by magic, surrealism, grotesquerie and non-realistic cartoonery, we get at it more closely. It can hit us in a way that a news report can’t. Porpentine’s “game” asks us to think about what it is that are we really playing at.
Enjoy.
Magically Real Management
Stephanie Barbé Hammer Writing (Un) Real 