CHERYL POPE
The Games We Play locates the use of language and the spoken word as a tool of power.
This collection began with the performance piece titled Restraint which is an external physicalization of the internal battle I experience when I either say or do not say what I want. I am not interested in the negotiations that occur in our expression, but rather the concrete statements that we restrain ourselves from speaking.
Within the production of language, most often it is the spoken word that comes before the written word. This highlights to me the importance and the power of speech as a tool of influence, change, and evolution.
As a result of this performance piece, I became interested in the statements that are restrained by young people today, who I see as our next makers and leaders.
I began with the question: “in a recent moment of confrontation, positive or negative, what was the one statement you wanted to say but didn’t?”
I brought this question to juniors and seniors at Lindblom Math and Science Academy and Farragut Career Academy in Chicago. Those interested in the participating in the project were asked to speak their restrained or censored statement into a cheerleading style megaphone that I recorded with video and audio. The teens were generous, brave, and powerful. The audio collected is projected through a speaker installed in the megaphone for the exhibition.
The work titled The Games We Play, moves into questioning the way we respond when we get what we didn't ask for. This work functions as a game similar to a carnival game and the viewer is asked to participate with the piece by tossing a coin into the work as if it is a wishing well. If the coin falls into one of the leg forms, the viewer reads the text embroidered on the socks, such as “something broken.” They then have to answer what that “something broken” is to them at that moment.
The text on the outer ring of the leg forms, in varsity style patches, is a selections of binaries. In the U.S. I feel that so much of our identities is constructed through binaries and positioning oneself on one side or the other. I believe that truth lies in the space between the binaries. My intention was to position and contextualize these binaries in order to surface the absurdity of the possibility of it being one or the other.
The Games We Play, 2010
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