8 women 8 rules.pdf

8 WOMEN 8 RULES/ 8 MUJERES 8 REGLAS Annika Olofsdotter Bergström and Pirjo Elovaara Blekinge Institute of Technology Pirgatan, 374 35 Karlshamn Sweden aob@bth.se, pirjo.elovaara@bth.se Resumen 8 mujeres jugando con linternas en un oscuro e invernal bosque Nórdico, acompañadas por los ecos en sus celulares de una cantante árabe mundialmente famoso - Qué tiene que ver esto con ciudades creativas y divertidas? Ésta expedición al bosque fue parte de un proyecto no tradicional de investigación- acción participativa en el sud-este Sueco. El proyecto proporcionó el material empírico para nuestra historia reflexiva. El objetivo general del proyecto fue investigar, a partir de divertidas exploraciones, cómo un grupo diverso de mujeres pueden transformar para nosotros lugares desconocidos, por un lado sobre los aspectos geográficos, culturales y sociales, y por otro sobre cómo lugares por si mismos pueden transformar a las personas. En el fondo el proyecto también desafió la noción de ciudadanía, no como un término legal, sino como un activo y continuo "llegar a ser". El equipo central del proyecto estuvo conformado por académicos, agentes de la municipalidad, y un grupo de mujeres inmigrantes Sirias. Cuando comenzamos a planificar el proyecto tuvimos la necesidad de referentes teóricos que pudieran apoyarnos en nuestra diversión "playfulness", sin perder el entendimiento crítico y situado de nuestra trayectoria. Así pues, identificamos algunos conceptos clave provistos por nuestras acompañantes epistemológicas, tales como: cuidado "caring" (de la Bellacasa, 2012), tocar-sentir/llegar a ser "touching/becoming" (de la Bellacasa, 2009), desorden "messiness" (Law, 2004). Para encontrarnos con estos enfoques hemos usado y desarrollado métodos que pudieran facilitarnos una exploración divertida "the exploratory playfulness"; por lo tanto nos inclinamos hacia los artísticos movimientos de Situacionistas y Surrealistas. Estas elecciones demandaron una conciencia sensible de nosotras mismas, de cada una y de los lugares. Nosotras localizamos este proyecto como un marco transdisciplinario de juegos geolocalizados "site specific games", diseño participativo e investigación feminista. Palabras clave Juegos geolocalizados , diversión, cuidado, tocar Abstract 8 women in a dark Nordic winter forest, playing around with flashlights, accompanied by the echoing of a world famous Arabic singer from their mobile phones- what has this to do with creative and playful cities? This forest expedition was a part of a non-traditional participatory research and action project from southeastern Sweden. The project provides the empirical material for our reflective story. The overall aim of the project was to investigate, through playful explorations, how a diverse group of women can transform for us unfamiliar places, both concerning geographical, cultural, social aspects, and also how places in themselves can transform people. Ultimately the project also challenged the notion of citizenship not as a legal term but as an active and ongoing becoming. The core group of the project was created by academic scholars, municipality and a number of female immigrants from Syria. When we started to plan the project we were in need of theoretical guides that could support us in our playfulness, without losing the critical and situated understanding of our trajectory and hence we identified some key concepts provided by our epistemological companions, such as: caring (de la Bellacasa, 2012), touching/becoming (de la Bellacasa, 2009), messiness (Law, 2004). To meet up these approaches we had to rely on and develop methods that could enable the exploratory playfulness; therefore, we turned to the artistic movements of Situationists and Surrealists. These choices demanded a sensitive awareness towards ourselves, each other and the places. We locate this project as a transdisciplinary framework of site-specific games, participatory design and feminist research. Keywords Site-specific games, playfulness, caring, touching, Introduction - Staging Imagine a small Swedish city, close to the Baltic Sea but the only water you can see is the creek that gently flows through the city. It was an old military centre; it had an industry in enamel and sheet metal industry and was famous for its big and beautiful spa. A proud city with a green and flourishing square in the middle. Today this city is inhabited by 28000 citizens, smaller stores have shut down, the government agencies have vanished, the square is made of grey stones and a big part of the population vote for the Swedish democrats, the nationalist and conservative party. The name of the small city is Ronneby and it was better before. But then by sudden in autumn 2015, Ronneby took a turn. Because of the huge immigration wave, the city increased is the population with 3.3%, mostly people from Syria. In a blink the atmosphere of the streets changed, new shop windows opened up for unknown objects for sale, cans with a table of contents with Arabic letters started to find their ways to shops; every sixth company was started up by a new citizen. The quiet and sleepy city square got two new falafel cars and young guys like to hang out there. Suddenly it wasn't so easy to eavesdrop in Swedish any longer. The change of course also contributed to a strong aversion and fear towards the newcomers, "the others". All over Sweden media started to report about immigrants being threatened and camps were set on fire by Swedes against the open-door policy. However, Ronneby became a place that welcomed most immigrants in Sweden in terms of head. The small Swedish town has changed and the project, this paper is about, started from that change. Aim of research – Marked places What marks, both in a literal and figurative sense, do we carry and what marks do we get along the way while we travel, move and pause? How can we take care of these marks together with women coming from places others than ours, carrying radical different experiences and how can we do that in a collective playfulness? These initial questions triggered us. However, it is not only we as individuals who carry marks of different sizes, shapes, colours and expressions, but also physical places are marked. Places can evoke memories, carry power structures; places can give a feeling of discomfort, uncanniness. Some places are not for women, like dark tunnels, some places are not for children, like places with many cars, gated communities are not for low-income inhabitants. Often, we unconsciously read the different meanings and symbols, which are attached to places by people, their values, interests and agendas. We also know that especially women's mobility has been restricted historically and culturally (Massey, 1994). Home has traditionally been a closed space for women and when a move is taken out to the unpredictable streets it challenges both women and men because so many public places are scripted masculinity (like football fields, skateboard fields, running tracks in forests). Even almost all names on the streets of cities are related to the male world and their endeavours (see Solnit, 2016 and see it for yourself). Cities produce distinctive bodies with distinctive traits of behaviours and minds and at the same time cities divide and organize relations, lives, activities, identities (Grosz, 1992). But a city is simultaneously a rhizome of living relations. Questions, observations and reflections did not leave us. They got stuck in our bodies and minds and requested and demanded to become our travelling companions and guides in further explorations. New questions got formulated: How can a small Swedish city be the playground for 8 women where they together explore boundaries, blank spots, dark places, unknown locations? How can we mark and get marked by these places? Theoretical framework Our main theoretical framework is grounded in feminist technoscientific philosophies. These philosophies are developed and discussed in various contexts, but for our own work, we are mainly inspired by Donna Haraway. She challenges in our epistemological understandings by emphasizing the impossibility of universal knowledge, or as she puts it ´view from nowhere´ (1988:584) instead she provides the notion of situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988). Knowledge is hence always partial but in the partiality lays possibilities for criticality, accountability and objectivity. When we started to plan the project, we were in need of theoretical guides that could support us in our playfulness, without losing the critical and situated understanding of our trajectory and hence we identified some, concepts provided by our epistemological companions, such as: caring (de la Bellacasa, 2012), touching/becoming (de la Bellacasa, 2009), messiness (Law, 2004). To meet up these approaches we had to rely on and develop methods that could enable the exploratory playfulness; therefore, we turned to the artistic movements of Situationists and Surrealists. Methods From the beginning, the flaneur was a gentleman, a dandy who strolled in the streets of Paris free from work and pressure (see Baudelaire and Benjamin). Strolled to see and to be seen. The female flaneur (flaneuse) was a person in the margins, like prostitutes or murder victims (Wolff and Buck-Mors in Olofsson, 2008). In the fifties, the movement of Situationists, (activists and artists), took the dandy strolling further by making walking to a practice of political action of the everyday consciousness that focused on the acts in the city and how these could be subverted into radicalizing the knowledge experiences (Flanagan, 2009:195). Several artists and media makers have used walking as a method to get merged with places to understand them instead of just visually depicting them on distant (O'Rourke, 2013). The Situationists also used mapping as a method where the inner psychology of the walker together with the urban space would reflect each other. They made up rules for specific routes to get new perspectives of the city but since the Situationist were bound by their time and place they prioritized individuals who could move independently in cities (Flanagan, 2009). Influences from the movement opened up for us as a group of women with restricted movement patterns, to explore how we can take action over places instead of letting the places rule over us (Sadler, 1999). We asked ourselves what it is to be a woman of today when moving in and inhabiting public spaces, how our bodies as a site of power and identity (Haraway 1988) can be the mean for play in this embodied knowledge. With the experiments of mapping spaces outside ourselves but as well as within our bodies (O'Rourke, 2013) we created site-specific games momentarily designed by us and by the places while encountered them. For us, the site-specific game as an inspiration and frame was connecting to power, gender and ethnicity and asked questions how alienated patterns where transformed to everyday life and matters. The many realities had to overlap in a connecting net (Law, 2004) and by letting the shape and expressions be unknown and rather unplanned, we have "messed about the absence" (Law, 2004:90), playing with the ambiguity of what will come out from this. So, let´s play 28th of January 2016 Rule no 1 (Mapping) – One, Two, Three. Four, Five and Six. Seven and Eight met around a table, in the middle a map over Ronneby. A small town located in the south-east of Sweden. A net of streets. The blue wobbly line indicating the creek. A square. The big green park. A blue spot by the edge of the map, making the lake. Four, Five and Six started to look for their street. One, Two and Three tried to find the big food store. Seven wanted to find the spot for the library and Eight was watching the scene. What places were common, scareful, uncommon or just familiar? On the list of Places, I never visit the lake, football stadium, ice arena, theatre, cinema, clothing stores, swimming hall, the airport, most places in Ronneby. On the list of Places, I want to visit; all the places on the former list but adding the church, the Sea, China and Thai restaurants. And the Places I visit often: the big food stores (Willys, ICA Maxi), The Park Library, Soft Center (for the Swedish classes), Culture centre and each other's homes. On the list of Places, I avoid; The forest, dark places in town, the liquor store, So, what was the impression of the town? All 8 speak at each other eagerly: "It is nice," "yes peaceful", "but boring", "no people in the streets", "its small", "its friendly", "beautiful". Naturally, the weather became the focus. "It is so dark", "pitch dark", "in winter we hardly see the sun". "It is cold". "But not so much snow as in the north part where we first came to when arriving in Sweden", Six said. "In Damascus, there are people everywhere, literally, everywhere". "You are never alone", said Three. 2nd of February 2016 Rule no 2 (Walking) - 8 pairs of feet walking the streets of Ronneby. 8 mouths talking about what they see. They are like winter tourists, discovering through the darkness. In front of the bright shining Middle- East shop window they stopped. The store obtaining furniture and withdrawing cash among a whole range of other things. Seven and Eight couldn't read the Arabic signs so One to Six all translated. They passed other stores, a bank, the square. It was very cold. Eight women took the stairs up to the church but stopped on the ledge by the wishing well. Red, green, blue, purple and yellow lightened up the pond. Eight whishes were made. By the church there was a statue of a woman, flowers in her lap, patiently waiting for summer. She got a name. On a rolled paper was written in ink: Zenobia, after an old Syrian queen. Slippery streets forced eight pairs of feet to walk like penguins. Down to the murmuring creek. "Are there any jumping crocodiles here?" Five shuddered. Two wanted to force the water to the other side. The walk continued on empty pebble stones, passing a female craft collective 39, named after the shoesize of the women who started it, all the way home to Eight. Tea and cookies. Drawings and reflection of the walk. Three wanted to colour Zenobia but she was all dark. "What colour does she feels like?", Seven asked. "Red, that is a power colour", Three stated. 16th of February 2016 Rule no 3 (Lighting) - Eight bodies muffled – up, met on the red bridge spanned from one part of the town to the other, over the creek. The sun was setting a and it was cold and white. Breaths visible like clouds. The snow like an empty map, perfect for personal patterns made by steps. Or using an empty bottle as a stamp. Names were written, with Latin letters, with Arabic letters. Printing new meridians and setting new nodes. Eight bodies made star jumps to keep warm. When the sun took a deep breath and sank into the earth, Eight women drank hot chocolate and ate cookies in the park. of Now eight flashlights ruptured the darkness, eight women twittered loudly and laughed their way in between trees. Three and Five were insecure by what dangerous animals possible could be lurking in the blackness. "I would never in my life do this walk on my own", Six said and waved with the flashlight. The group of eight moved very tightly, giving each other the courage to continue. Suddenly they stopped in a circle a and Four started to play the famous artist Oum Kalthoum on her phone. The women started to dance and sing like crazy. The silent forest was now a place for eight different songlines. Four remembered her homeland, her family, now scattered all over the world. She translated the lyrics, and through the dark, her eyes were shining brightly. They reached the icy lake, imagined the summer. Seven learned a new word: jalid. Ice in Arabic. 1st of March 2016 Rule no 4 (Wording) - In the library, in between stories they met to pick three random sentences each, from three random books. Write them down on a paper. 24 sentences. 8 pairs of scissors cutting up the sentences, combining new stories. Difficulties to fully understand the Swedish language, the small nuances. What if a sentence from a children book is combined with a sentence from a book about Egypt with a sentence from a book about a depressing marriage? Eight women are now authors, brutally making new stories as a collective. 15th of March 2016 Rule no 5 (Asking) - In the square, they met. Sunny and bright. On the benches neatly placed on the side of the space, there were young men sitting. Smoking. Talking. Five said that she never goes to the square because of the men. Two said she could go there in summer time, with her family to eat ice cream. The women made a circle and colourful playing broken telephone. One started. She whispered a sentence to Two. Two retold the message to Three and so they continued the full circle. Eight announced what message she got: "He likes falafel" What was the original sentence? "My husband´s parents are here for a visit". The group burst into laughter. So, tweaked the information was in the end. Next mission was to write short messages on notes and give them to people crossing the square. Which season do you like most? Where are the benches missing? Which place in Ronneby do you like most? Eight messages passing on to strangers. Some ignored the notes, others took the notes without looking at them, few dared to answer. But the note about the missing benches got response from the group of men leaning on a bench. First, they were bewildered, did the women accuse them for something? For stealing the benches? Suddenly they understood and one man even had information about the benches: "They need makeover." 12th of April 2016 Rule no 6 (Measuring) - Out of nothing eight women re-appeared in the square. Rhythmically walked in different directions. Nodded. Counted: one, two, three, four, five, six, sometimes up to sixty-six. Five wrote the number in a book. Two and Three pull the ruler, started to measure the size of the square. Added numbers in the book. Seven and One measured one part of the square. Six and eight counted lampposts, thirty. Lamplights, onehundredtwentyeight. Food carts, two. Bins, four. Trees, sixty. "It's not possible", Seven cried. The group gathered and scattered, collected numbers. Benches, twenty. Billboards three. The total squared was scrupulously measured and investigated. Finally, Five added all the numbers in the calculator. It took some moment. "30124 square meters", she smiled. "Just a thought, said Five: how much space does a person take?" "We can count how many people the square fills, said Four". They measured around a person's feet to get the average size. Counted once more. "61648 people", said Three. So many people, fourfold the citizens of Ronneby. What can we do with all these numbers? Eight brains worked out. How can we activate the square to make it enjoyable for everyone? Why don't we invite the citizens of Ronneby to come to the square and take their space? To make history for future citizens. 26th of April 2016 Rule no 7 (Claiming) - If the square was a place where anything could happen, what would you love to do? Come and take your place was announced all over Ronneby. When people came, they had to draw a chalk circle around her or him. Explaining for eight women what they wanted to do in the square in the future. " You don't go there to sit really. It is a dead space, a big empty square which is not used". The square was filled with colorful circles. " Take away the stones". Red circle. " Make a park" Green circle. Eight women tried to get more active answers, what do you want to do?" "I want to come here and dance." Yellow circle. "I want to participate in a flashmob." Pink circle. " What if artists from all over the world could come here and paint and sell their paintings, like an art fair." A big, big blue circle. "Drink coffee with friends." A square circle in white around a stroller. Eight women couldn't help themselves from laughing when people avoided them when crossing the square. One woman said she was in a hurry and started to run. What was so frightening? To be approached and expected to deliver? Or just the sight of the bunch of women interrogating? When the claiming was over eight women counted to 55 circles. Rule no 8 (Transgressing) Eight women went for a daytime walk. To discover which places were locked and which places were unlocked. Passing by a house with a fence, a sign warning for the dog. Definitely locked. But a space by the creek with two benches? "One of the first things we were told when we came to Sweden was not staying too long in front of people´s gardens". So, eight women passed very quickly houses and gardens. Trying to carefully and silently explore the surroundings, trying not to make too much noise and not being too visible. When people passing eight women call a Swedish ´Hej! Eight women walked. Suddenly they stopped by insecurity. No signs. Just a feeling that there is an invisible border. Eight women took another turn. Where does this feeling of an unsafe place come from? From body or experience or even preconceptions? Eight women wondered if they have the key to the locked spaces. Conclusions 1 - Playing with boundaries We started with a few hidden nodes from an almost empty map and rule-by-rule our physical mapping gave shape to a new world. A world that repeatedly unfolded in a becoming after each rule. By caring through site-specific playfulness and by touching the matters of 8 rules (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2009). New marks were made in bodies, on sites as an act of engagement: the stumbling on dark paths, the walking on streets, the meeting with the square, the clash with bodies, the difficulties with words, the beauty of becoming. Knowledge and meanings were made by pushing ordinary practices in a specific way of seeing and learning in our bodies (Haraway, 1988). The encountering with a place through claiming visibility became a personal manifestation and so the places impacted the collective with anchors and synchronously oriented us from the place that was towards place to come (Casey, 2009). We became the places. These particular places, these urban spaces of Ronneby became our living rooms (Casey, 2009:23) where we tried out becoming by being in touch temporarily, by chance. In this caring of the small, seemingly insignificant games, different relations were evoked embracing other possible existences (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2012) of being somewhere in particular (Haraway, 1988) and engage with that specific moment. Conclusions 2 - Caring Citizens Not only the city was discovered but also ourselves, our dreams and desires. By touch we levelled up to a caring citizenship, in embodiment we weaved new connections and knowledge. We could touch the uncomfortableness of being different, acting differently but collectively transforming those feelings into courage and awareness, playing with the marks and boundaries. Locating and integrating the game with the urban space playing no longer occurs in solitude, but becomes rather a performance and manifestation in public, not as a spectacle (see Debord) rather as a personal intimate instant. Surrender to the unpredictable and the messy, surrender and you will be engaged. The meaning of Ronneby, at first just a space, quite blank, changed along the path we carefully mapped to become a measured place, a position from where we could cross and brace against. So, we cared and so we moved (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2012). Rule-by-rule to come closer to the unknown. The empty spots in the map were no longer featureless imaginative projections of polarities, but now bodily locations, places of possibilities. The unknown movement in places transferred in our bodies as embodied maps with pathways (O'Rourke, 2013) of existence. This cognitive mapping (ibid) gave structure for the citizenship as an ownership of meaningfulness. The citizenship is a practice of engagement. Becoming the city and populating it (Haraway, 1988) as an act, which means activating, remapping, and creating a path, a personal pattern. To become a citizen is to connect the affirmation of the differences. Not to avoid but to reach out. Play around. To become a citizen is to get involved in relations, in everyday life, in the mundane. To fill instead of fixing, to stay in the trouble (ibid) of the everyday practical life. Conclusions 3 - Think and touch with To think and touch with the city (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2012) has given us a sensation of a new way to overcome fear and anxiety of not belonging and of being excluded. The women collective has been immensely important in the process as a matter of care and concern in the process, sharing similar experiences and understandings, overcoming hesitation and reluctance of being exposed. The playing with the unpredictable. In the trying of claiming public spaces by collecting partial perspectives to get the whole and its potential (Haraway, 1988) we have allowed us to be a secret subject. When working with the square and the event of "Come and claim" we realized it was troublesome to include others in the process since the care for others´ opinions got a bit overwhelming and complicated. Our paths and patterns got disrupted with other meanings. The act of turning out in an intimate process made us facilitator more than explorers. But when returning to think with Ronneby, we stayed in the trouble (ibid) and let the city to flow through us. We became immersed. This explorative process has been focused on the unknown, unpredictable and the messiness of being a citizen. It has not been about changing visible structures of a town but to expand space for thinking and playing with new embodiment. The playful movement of our exploration was a subversive act not to categorize or designate our activities or us as objects (Eduards, 2002) but rather as active subjects.  How could this small intimate process of ours become sustainable as in unfolded and embedded in public spaces? That is a question we ask ourselves and the reader of this paper. References: Eduards, Maud. (2002). Förbjuden handling – om kvinnors organisering och feministisk teori. Malmö: Liber ekonomi. Flanagan, Mary. (2009). Critical Play radical game design. MIT press, Massachusetts Institute of technology. Grosz, Elisabeth. (1992). Bodies/ Cities. In Colomina, Beatrice (Eds.), Sexuality and Space. (pp. 241-254). Princeton Architectural Press. Haraway, Donna. (1988). 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(2016, oct). The city of women. The newyorker. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/city-of-women