"I wanted to show the passage of time … I was able to show what it looked like before it was left, but then what it looks like now, you know, 35 years later. I chose to leave the porch on there, which is rotted out, and [leave] everything to look quite rustic on the outside."
*Thanks, Sheila!*
Renegade librarian Ross Horsley takes old picture books and alters the text in surprising ways. The result is that an insipid book becomes awesome.
This is amazing. I'm breaking my usual rules of post length for this one.
Brathwaite assembled a collection of tiny wooden figures, then had her daughter group them into "families." After her daughter was finished, she picked them up by the handful and placed them on a makeshift boat. Her daughter was confused: Why would she take the parents but leave the baby? Why wouldn't brothers stay with their sisters? "No one wants to go," Brathwaite explained. That's when it started to click.
Then Brathwaite devised a primitive resource management mechanic. It took 10 turns for the boat to cross the Atlantic. The boat had 30 units of food. Each turn, the player had to roll a d6, and reduce their food stores by that number. By the trip's halfway point, it was clear to her daughter that her "cargo" wouldn't make it. It wasn't a "fun" game by any means, but it served a different purpose: It helped her daughter intuitively understand the emotional experience of the slave trade, a lesson that numbers on a chalkboard couldn't provide.
. . .
But no one in the audience was prepared for her third game, unassumingly titled Train.
The object of Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.
The destination? Auschwitz.
The "game" didn't stop there, however. The game board, pictured above, is an allusion to Kristallnacht - Brathwaite explained that she needed to break a fresh piece of glass each time she "installed" her work in a new location to properly evoke the violence of the experience. She even typed the game's instructions on an actual SS typewriter, which she purchased solely for that purpose.
There were audible gasps in the audience when Brathwaite revealed Train's shocking conclusion; one attendee was so moved by the experience that she left the conference room in tears.
Buy T-Shirts, Mugs and Sweatshirts from one of our many Cafepress Shops.
Standard Store (Where you can find the famous Robot Shirt) Christmas Store (Santa Moongiver and Lee Harvey Oswald team up to spread joy) Pulp Paperback Store (Shirts made from the racy covers of 50's era pulp paperbacks... including one by Faulkner!)
