What is Giotto and what is for?
Giotto is a street game, a game as poor as those our grandparents played using fruit stones, pebbles, bottle caps and a lot of imagination; it is a group game aimed to guess drawings and to interpret them with imagination; it is a game that is played outdoors by involving as many people as possible.
In order to play, just few things are needed: coloured chalks, a deck of cards and some small objects to score the points. Giotto is a "dictated drawing" game that aggregates people, entertains and, through the drawings on the sidewalks or in the streets, leaves a track that does not pollute and disappears after a while.
Giotto is mostly a way, albeit temporary and ephemeral, to take possession of public space, to see it as a space to be used. A space of possibilities and meeting that the act of playing, far more than other kind of practices, is able to disclose. During Giotto, the space of the street is precisely the blank sheet to fill and the passers-by are our potential team-mates. It is also a way to look at squares, sidewalks, clearings and at their characteristics with new eyes: the cracks in the asphalt can be part and parcel of the drawings, that unnoticed corner the most suitable place where the scoreboard can be written, that particular step the perfect point from where everyone can perfectly hear the description of the picture to draw...
Playing in the street by drawing on the ground, doing it in teams, children and grown-up together, is a collective process of uncovering both the potential of public space and what a shared action can do. That is Giotto’s goal: the drawings made with chalk will dissolve soon, but the memory of how a space can be differently and collectively used, is a tougher track to be erased.
To play Giotto few things are needed:
- a deck of #upgiotto cards;
- coloured chalks;
- something to mark the score (pebbles, bottle caps) in number equal to the number of players + 1.
- a group of at least three people (the ideal number of players is 6/7 people, if you are more than 6 you may form more teams)
To begin:
You draw a scoreboard with a number of rows and columns equal to the number of players in each team (it will be equal to the number of rounds of the game). In the first column you write the names of the players, in the later ones you will write the scores obtained by each player.
To play:
You have to choose the first of the players who will be the "Voice" (all the players will play this role in turn).
The "Voice" will pick a random card from the deck and will describe the picture on it to the other players. No one has to see the card, but just imagine it through the story told by the Voice. Players can ask questions.
The purpose of the game is to draw the described picture as similar as possible to the one actually drawn on the card and thus obtain the highest score.
After a previously fixed time, each player will stop drawing and the Voice will show the card to everybody.
Each player will take a piece and give his score to the drawing that he/she considers more similar to the one on the card. The score of the Voce is worth two points.
The game is repeated for as many runs until all the players have been the Voice. The player with the highest score wins.
Whenever you play Giotto in your cities, please remember, if you like, to  publish photos on social media with the hashtag #upgiotto and email them to [email protected], we will publish them on our blog http://upgiotto.tumblr.com/
Giotto is a game invented by Alessandro Ceresoli and gruppo A12 (Andrea Balestrero, Gianandrea Barreca, Antonella Bruzzese, Maddalena De Ferrari), realized for the first time in 2010 in the streets of Mexico City.
#upgiotto is a project started in 2012, under the coordination of Rossana Ciocca, to promote Giotto sessions in other squares and other cities, observing and recording the ephemeral transformations of the public spaces involved.
From 2010 on Giotto has been played, among others, by:
Galeria de Comercio, Mexico City
Peep-hole, Milano
Fine Art Academy, Naples
MAGA Museum, Gallara te
Pastificio Cerere Foundation, Rome
Abadir Academy, Catania
Biennale of Architecture, Venice
Villa Croce Museum, Genoa
Cantieri d’Arte, Viterbo
Casa del Lago, Mexico City
Alessandro Ceresoli is a visual artist interested in the creative act and how this investigation involves the subject and its individuality. His drawings are the core of a haunting and obsessive process of research, around which he develops projects of different forms and nature which do not immediately connote a visual style that is initially recognizable. Behind the conception and production of any object is the hidden effort behind the process. He lives and works in Milan and Berlin.
[email protected]
http://alessandroceresoli.blogspot.it/
A12 is a collective of architects originally constituted in Genoa in 1993. The group have achieved international recognition in the field between art and architecture, it's work involving very different fields of design activities: architectural design, exhibition design, urban projects, public art, installations, product and graphic design, cultural, didactic and research activities. Active members of the group are: Andrea Balestrero, Gianandrea Barreca, Antonella Bruzzese, Maddalena De Ferrari, based in Milan.
[email protected]
www.gruppoa12.org
Rossana Ciocca is a contemporary art gallerist deeply interested in urban themes.
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