Primitive Games
2018
On June 21, 2018, the Guggenheim’s rotunda was transformed into a gladitorial arena. Commissioned as part of Guggenheim Social Practice, the project asked “What might happen when four seemingly divided groups are invited to debate one another without using words?” The June event followed artist-led, movement-based workshops with participants from four groups, each with a unique relationship to gun violence: citizens impacted by street violence, military veterans, police officers, and recreational users of firearms. Staged amid increasingly divisive national politics, Primitive Games gave performers and audience members alike an opportunity to reconsider their own place within contemporary debates.
We now occupy a time when communication has devolved into strategies of proving oneself right. I knew there was a potential in bringing groups, divided around a central issue, to a moment of reckoning… to debate one another without the use of words.”
On June 21, 2018, the Guggenheim’s rotunda was transformed into a gladitorial arena. Commissioned as part of Guggenheim Social Practice, the project asked “What might happen when four seemingly divided groups are invited to debate one another without using words?” The June event followed artist-led, movement-based workshops with participants from four groups, each with a unique relationship to gun violence: citizens impacted by street violence, military veterans, police officers, and recreational users of firearms. Staged amid increasingly divisive national politics, Primitive Games gave performers and audience members alike an opportunity to reconsider their own place within contemporary debates.
We now occupy a time when communication has devolved into strategies of proving oneself right. I knew there was a potential in bringing groups, divided around a central issue, to a moment of reckoning… to debate one another without the use of words.”