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The Hopscotch of Revolt1
To play this game the following are required:
Coloured chalk
Stones (more than one in case of confiscation!)
Paving stones
Players
Venue:
Anywhere where there are paving stones but, ideally, at a location where games are permitted but demonstration forbidden by law!
Drawing the hopscotch
A circle divided into six equal segments is drawn with chalk on paving stones. At its centre is traced an inner circle named Utopia. Each of the six segments is the name of a desire: the Right to Laziness, Conviviality, Human Community, Anarchy, Freedom, and You (designating the intimacy of love).A rectangle divided into seven parts connects with the outer circle; its adjoining section is named Childhood and the other six sections, representing dystopia, are named: Religion and Fundamentalisms, Patriarchy, Nationalism, Homelessness, Capitalism.
Rules:
Each player must throw the stone successively into the sections of the hopscotch, beginning at Capitalism.In the first round, at each turn, while hopping and without putting a foot on the lines, the player pushes the stone with his/her foot to the sections and segments of the hopscotch. The penalty for touching the line is to return to the start.
Once the player has crossed all the sections and segments and arrived at Freedom, he/she can finally hop into the inner circle of Utopia.
The game continues with two further rounds: one in which the stone is balanced on the head of each player; the other in which the player stands in the circle of Utopia, positions the stone on the elbow-joint and, bypassing Childhood and without touching Capitalism, projects it to the outside by rapidly opening the arm.
The goal of the game is not winning but arriving, and resisting the dominant systems in society. Such games facilitate the recovery of our imaginations in the daily life; we discover the poetry of life and the pleasure of dreams that can be connected with reality. The game evokes a time-space in which revolutionary activity anticipates the transcending of alienation and the transformation of both space and society.
Play
Would you like to support Brian Haw by playing Hopscotch of Revolt at Parliament Square?Because the Hopscotch of Revolt is a game it has the possibility of cocking a snook at Section 132 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005; players should not be arrested because we would be seen to be playing not demonstrating! If you would like to take part in a sixteen hour non-stop playing of the game, please contact Jill Fenton at j.fenton@qmul.ac.uk. We plan to play the Hopscotch of Revolt in the spring of 2008.
1 With acknowledgments to the Paris group of the Surrealist move- ment who created this version of hopscotch and played it between 29 September and 1 October 1995 in a cul-de-sac adjoining the head- quarters of the anarchist syndicate, CNT, in rue des Vignoles, 20th arrondissement.