Jamie Harper: The Aesthetics and Politics of Play

As larp develops and draws on the insights of performance studies and fine art, attention is increasingly paid to its aesthetic properties. In contrast to conventional aesthetics that focus on the creation and perception of art objects, new arguments have emerged that argue for new concepts of aesthetic experience.

Nicolas Bourriaud's 'relational aesthetics' that looks at the aesthetic value of social conviviality and Grant Kester's 'dialogical aesthetics' which foregrounds the transformations that inter-subjective exchange can enable have fed into theories of experiential aesthetics of larp. Finnish games studies scholar Jaakko Stenros has offered a compelling analysis of the aesthetic values of larp such as its embodied nature, its co-creative culture and also its structures of critical reflexivity.

This talk will summarise existing ideas of experiential aesthetics but also build on them to consider how the aesthetic experience might connect to political intentions of designers and political responses of players. Though largely theoretical, I will attempt to make some concrete propositions for how designers might link their cultivation of aesthetic experiences in larp with political and cultural concerns.

Bio

Jamie Harper trained on the Directors' Course at LAMDA and went on to win the JMK Directors' Award and the Cohen Bursary which led to a year as Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio. From 2008-2010 he was Associate Director at the Rose Theatre, Kingston then moved on to work with London Quest, a company specialising in interactive experiences. In 2011, his interactive drama It's Not the Winning was a finalist for the Oxford Samuel Beckett Award and his cross-media project A Tale of Two Johns was shortlisted for the New Transmedia Concepts Award at the 2012 MIPCube Festival in Cannes. Theatre productions include, The Hundred We Are at The Yard Theatre, Invasion! For Tooting Arts Club, Beyond the Pale at Southwark Playhouse and A Real Humane Person Who Cares and All That at the Arcola.

In addition to making games and play projects in theatre contexts, Jamie has undertaken several participatory projects in gallery settings. In December 2015, he worked with Romanian writer Alina Serban on I Declare At My Own Risk, a storytelling project about migration at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. In the spring of 2016 he collaborated with artist Adam James on Moving Up, a series of play projects for primary school children approaching the transition to secondary school for Serpentine Galleries and most recently, in February 2017, he presented Washing Machine, a live action role-play about what we want our lives to have meant when we reach the end of our lives, at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Newcastle. In addition to his artistic work, Jamie has taught acting and play development at a range of drama schools and higher education institutions including, LAMDA, the Arts Educational School, East 15, London South Bank University, University of Essex and Newcastle University, where he also works as a researcher of contemporary drama.