Idle Ideology: It's More than a Game

Surveying the Occupy Movement’s camp at New York’s Zuccotti Park in 2011, the media theorist McKenzie Wark posed the question: ‘How is it possible to create forms of life for ourselves, even if it’s in the shadow of tall buildings that cast long shadows?’1 Paul Gazzola and Nadia Cusimano’s ongoing project, Town Crossings, responds by suggesting that the spectral vector of the Frisbee offers a counter-practice to the networked, digital, economic and social flows of the city. The work for Performing Mobilities in 2015 tracked the Frisbee players by GPS through the streets of Melbourne as they engaged members of the public in a game. Activating and re-mapping the city as a playground seems like a playful thing to do, but the trajectory of the Frisbee leaves a more serious contrail for us to consider.