National Theatre School of Canada presented the first ever culturecapital:online livestreamed on the global, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Wednesday 20 May 2020 at 6 p.m. PDT (Vancouver, UTC-7) / 8 p.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC-5) / 9 p.m. EDT (Toronto, UTC-4) / Thursday 21 May 10:00 KST (Seoul, UTC+9) / 13:00 NZST (Auckland, UTC+12).
culturecapital is a live art project that takes the form of a collectible card game and living archive. The project is constructed from two sets of data: (1) hundreds of interviews with artists about their experiences making performance in Canada and (2) five years worth of municipal, provincial, and federal public funding data on performing arts companies. Using this information, the game strives to create a context in which players can question, understand, and celebrate how value is determined, shifted, and produced within theatre, dance, and live arts in Canada. No prior knowledge of art or games is required.
In April 2020, the project was awarded funding from the National Theatre School of Canada’s #ArtApart program to create an online performance. In the spirit of the game, it only seems right that the funding should be allocated through competition. Therefore, on Wednesday, May 20th, the game’s creators, Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn, have invited recent tournament champions, Beth Dart (Edmonton, AB) and Dave Mott (Vancouver, BC), to compete for $500 CAD of sweet art money.
How to Play: Adopting the role of stewards of the arts, players summon Companies, roll a die for government Grants, use those Grants to realize Projects, and then use those Projects to compete for Communities. Strategy cards are played to change the tide of the competition and whoever has the most Communities at the end, wins. Depending on how the cards are played, satire can be front and centre. But at other times, the cards dealt can offer a genuine window into the complexities of the relationship that artists have with public funding, being socially relevant, and navigating a rapidly changing landscape of ethics, politics, and economics within the arts.
For more information about the game or to order your own deck, check out https://www.culturecapital.cards
About the Artists: Milton Lim and Patrick Blenkarn are artists based in Vancouver, BC. Together, their collaborations constitute a framework for investigating labour and value, for utilizing game mechanics in performance, and for exploring alternative contexts of discourse. They are the co-founding archivists of videocan.ca and faculty members at the New Performance School.
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