League Nanaimo is a project led by Vancouver and Salt Spring Island based artist Germaine Koh that unites creative process and play and asks, “How can we play together?” Community members of all ages are invited to gather and exercise creativity by developing new games and sports through iterative, embodied activities. Games evolve organically as they are played, and strategies emerge through trial and improvisation, and sometimes new tools are invented on the fly.
Photo courtesy of Germaine Koh
On September 17, UBC visual art professors Germaine Koh and Damla Tamer boarded a ferry with 35 UBC students, including two fourth-year undergraduate visual art students and a few Critical Play fellows, and led the group on a field trip to Nanaimo Art Gallery to experience Koh’s exhibition League Nanaimo. The exhibition mashes up the languages of art and sport, turning the”white cube” space of the gallery into an experimental hockey rink in which visitors are welcome to interact with the objects and situations in the gallery. The space provides a combination of vague invitations to interact with adapted found objects, materials suggesting interaction, and games previously invented in the dozen-plus years of Koh’s League project focused on play as a form of creative practice. “League is an open group of people who gather to play sports and games invented by members of the community. Each game, its equipment, its playing field, and its strategies evolve through trial and improvisation. It’s problem-solving as play” (“About League”).
Photo courtesy of Germaine Koh
Koh and exhibition curator Jesse Birch, an alumnus of UBC’s Art History, Visual Art & Theory program, briefly introduced the scope of the League Nanaimo project (which expands into urban space), and a bit of theory about the importance of play and its intersection with creative practice. The group then broke into smaller groups to workshop new games using the materials in the gallery.
Photo courtesy of Germaine Koh