Play in Night Market

There was a conflict going on in my mind when I found the Night Market is on Thursday, at night. I have midterms on Friday and Saturday, and that should be an intensive night for me. But I know I would go, I know this the first time I saw the ads in Chinatown, it is something that means more than a good grade for me. Night Market is something rooted in my memories, with flashing lights, crowds, sweet smell of marshmallows in the air, and loud bargain sounds.

When I proposed to go there on Thursday, I thought there would be nobody with me, but it turns out that all the Chinese in the class wants to go to the event. When it comes to Night Market in Chinatown, nobody from China wants to miss it.

It’s the first Night Market I went to in Philly, but I feel there’s nothing really fresh and surprising in playing, instead, the fun I found in here is all about familiarity.

When people play in the city they naturally and serendipitously get blocked and fall into the critical structure and concepts of our society. Asking why something is in a certain place and looks the way it does, and what knowledge is conveyed to us in the city traces us back to the past.

The past is an abstraction that people live with the effects of. The minor details of the past are too extensive to record. People cannot record or remember every word, thought, gesture, tile, or perspective of the past. When I went on The Ghost Tour of Philadelphia, I paid to hear stories of the past and to possibly get scared. One of the first stories of the tour was about a housekeeper who saw Benjamin Franklin’s ghost in the American Philosophical Society Library. Besides this story being entertaining, it left me with vague images of that scene and wondering if the housekeeper had seen something that night. It led me to the questions of, “What was the housekeepers name?”, “What were her motives for reporting the ghost?”, “What time of day was it during the citing”, and “Where did she come from?” The answers to these questions were too broad and trivial for the purpose of the tour and the details were therefore lost on us. However, their result is partly why we heard the housekeeper’s story when we went on the tour.

“You will never be as beautiful in your life as you are now, so now is the time to start.”

As a young woman who aspires to do anything related to media and popular culture: modeling, singing, dancing, acting, this view is one that spearheads  a great amount of young careers. The idea that beauty is the quality that supersedes any amount of talent is widely held in the entertainment industry, and follows right behind the exploitation of women in society in general based on their physical appearance. The problem with adapting this philosophy in pursuit of a famous career is that women who participate in their self-exploitation then make it justifiable to be exploited by others. 

I went to the city twice over the weekend. Friday night, I went on a ghost tour, and on Sunday, I wandered the city after dropping a friend off at Amtrak at 30th St. Station. This was my first experience going on the subway system (specifically, the Market-Frankford Line/El) for the first time. While in the city, I focused on how I was using the things around me as a method for playing, to see if I could figure out what ‘technology’ is from Flanagan’s viewpoint.

Our mode of transportation is both technology in the obvious way and technology that helps us play. Transportation, especially new kinds, can be very playful when you are first discovering its quirks and the way it works. I feel that an important aspect of play is discovering new things and having adventures. When I went on the subway for the first time, by myself, it was very new and stressful as I tried to make sure that I was on the right line and going to the correct stop. So this kind of technology is a game in and of itself, not just a method used to play another game or get to a location to play with something else.

            What does it mean to play critically? Does that level of seriousness in play take away all of the things that make it play? According to Mary Flanagan in her book “Critical Play: Radical Game Design,” the term critical play is difficult to define and therefore can be described in many ways. Throughout the introduction of the book, Flanagan presents a few different definitions of this idea of critical play and how it differs from traditional play. In my most recent trip into the city of Philadelphia, I attempted to understand more about this idea of critical play by incorporating some of Flanagan’s ideas into my own actions.

Subversion is when the princess rescues the prince, or perhaps even tells the prince off and runs away with the dragon. Subversion is when a graffiti artist paints the likeness of a royal guard urinating on the side of a building. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “seeking or intended to subvert an established system or institution, or a person with such aims” (New Oxford American Dictionary). In her book Critical Play, Mary Flanagan notes that various theorists consider subversion to be “a powerful means for marginalized groups to have a voice” (Flannigan, 11). Over all, to me subversion is both the means and result when one takes established idea, person or thing, turns it on its head. This is what made my trips into the city so interesting; of the various artists and events we saw, not one was content to let the norm be the rule; they all took care to be subversive in someway. Ant Hampton, the artist behind the Quiet Volume, refused the notion that theater art could only take place in the theater, just as he played with the concepts of where the line between actor and audience falls, and how the senses, sight and hearing, merge. Isaiah Zagar similarly explored what it meant to make mosaics, where the line between mosaics and other art forms crossed, and just where the edge of the canvas actually was. Even the coffee shop I visited in Bryn Mawr was a little subversive, simply by nature of being an independent coffee shop instead of a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts.

There is something defiant about Isaiah Zagar’s mosaics. Cities are built for efficiency, functionality, but not necessarily beauty. Yet, around South Street, a glimmer of light in the gap between two buildings could mean a mosaic of mirrors and color. Zagar’s art is a street intervention, playfully ignoring Philadelphia’s figurative and literal grids to bring subversiveness and spontaneity to its streets. 

Zagar’s mosaics are inherently spontaneous. He doesn’t always plan ahead where his next mosaic will be, what it will look like, or where he will get his materials. Many of his mosaics spill across alleyways and onto the back walls of houses, creeping along fence lines as if they’re no longer in the artist’s control. The mosaics fill cracks in alleys with seemingly random words and images. Looking at a map of Zagar’s mosaics is not like looking at a map of a typical art gallery. The mosaics make no distinctive pattern and many do not even appear on the map. In the magic gardens, the route you take is not restricted to a path. Zagar’s art defies the city’s nearly symmetrical grid pattern in its meandering nature. The art is there “to disrupt the everyday actions in the city” by giving people a chance to think for themselves about what it could mean (Flanagan 14).

“To be able to create our identity in terms of who and/or what we really are, we have to find out through individual interpretation and understanding of certain terms and connotations of language” (Fuss 1995; 233-240).

For my anti-self-portrait project, I asked my friends and family to describe me with their own words. Asking them to use language helped define different aspects of my personality. They used words like, “introspective,” “smart,” and “stubborn” to describe me. As the individual, I can interpret their meaning and gain an outside understanding of how I presebt myself through their choice of language.

Introspective, very self-aware. My best friend mentioned this, and she’s referencing countless times we stay up until 3 in the morning at sleepovers trying to figure out why we think and act the way we do. When I’m meeting new people or I’m in unfamiliar social settings, I’m thinking simultaneously about how I’m coming across to people (Am I being funny? Am I being friendly? Am I saying too much? Is it not enough to make an impression?). Sometimes I’m too trapped in this insecure, self-concious frame of mind that I don’t say much to someone I’m meeting for the first time.  

My Critical Play

In Critical Play, Flanagan made the definition that “Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” Before I read this text this semester, I had never heard about critical play at all. Thus, with strong curiosity, I decided to design an activity which can be considered as a kind of critical play. This Saturday, I went to Chinatown to combine play and research with the question about human life—Why people choose Philadelphia to live in?

I will not ask natives this question, because the reason why they live in Philadelphia may be that they are born in the city, or there house located in the city. I want to ask settlers, which specialties of Philadelphia absorb them to let them stay here-- far away from their hometown. Thus, as a player, my goal is to find out the answer during my trip to Chinatown. I rambled along streets and visited stores there. I talked to different people with different jobs and did some interview to collect information.

My blackness always reigned as my dominant identity in high school, often times forcing me to choose between: black or woman.  Although I went to a relatively progressive high school, our discourse about race always seemed more significant.  I operated in a dual-consciousness that felt inherent.  In hindsight, I see that this was of course socialized, but it seemed natural to always be aware of how others perceive you, while expressing yourself in the way they can most understand.  I was use to always having to culturally translate or give the Black perspective, more concerned with how I said or expressed an opinion, than it’s actual content.  Of course I felt that it was unfair that my opinion in class would speak on behalf of my whole race, but I understood that I had no real choice.  Most of my peers never have to think of this intersectionality.  I felt that it was my job to educate them.  I had to make myself accessible, not only to socially survive, but also to contribute a valuable opinion that has been underrepresented in the classroom my entire academic career.