worksaboutcontact
Veronika Tzekova reGIERung FOOOOTBALLLL LOVEOFPOWEROFLOVE Reconstructed Identity Space Appropriators _2 Space Appropriators Space NRGZers Sweetshirt WUMAMPAROI

CHAlleNGED Games

(The plausible possible or Monuments to CHAlleNGE)

2012- 2019

CHAlleNGED Games

CHAlleNGED Games series seeks for extended meaning in playing and its relation to aspects of human existence and production. CHAlleNGED Games are familiar games with a twist, a change made so to challenge.

CHAlleNGED Games are author’s games and toy designs, based on already existing and familiar ones and fusing conceptual art and design. The series seeks for extended meaning in playing and its relation to aspects of human existence and production.

CHAlleNGED Games are familiar games with a twist, a change made so to challenge.

Nothing lights up the brain like play. Playing is an essential learning medium not only for kids and can be applied to a broad spectrum of activities: object play, body play, social play, imaginative play, ritual play, etc. Play is leg up on adaptability, develops emotional maturity, improves decision making and problem solving, Play is also a great empathy tool for projecting activities. It is a genetic birth right and extraordinary transformative force.

Playing is not an anarchy. It has regulations and codes of negotiation. Games have components and are played by rules. In the CHAlleNGED Games one of these is “hacked” and challenges the game and the players’ intelligence to adapt and evolve, which is an essential tool for positively rethinking and creatively altering one’s habitat.

CHAlleNGED Games are suggestive forms of play with routine, common rules and knowledge and the status quo. Popular and familiar games and toys are rediscovered, transformed beyond the infra ordinary and introduced so to challenge the public intelligence and social interactivity. Through upcycling the very base of learning tools such as games and toys, memory and habituation are reshuffled, so to open new horizons for individual emotional and noetic experiences, infuse unbridled creativity and change the mind setup, behavior and response patterns on a daily basis.

The CHAlleNGED Games concept:

- Questions individual positioning in society, choices, social interactivity and exchanges, and provokes new realms of communication and competition.

- Defies rules in a playfully subversive way.

- Can be used as an instrument for gathering lager groups of people, either in spontaneous games or with organized teams in particular occasion. The originality of the design, the mixture of familiar and strange in the setup of the game creates new challenges and will stimulate and motivate people to visit and exercise physically, mentally and socially playing the CHAlleNGED Games.

- I believe that the CHAlleNGED Games have the potential to turn into landmark. And even though playing the game is important, it is not crucial. The important is that people start thinking in a “what if…?” manner. We are all after opportunities, but they rarely come without difficulties. We all cherish change, but fear the challenges it brings. Through changing the original challenge of the games the CHAlleNGED Games Games concept challenges a change to occur in the public’s intelligence and push it to function in a world with multiplied opportunities and respectively to handle multiplied difficulties.




“Beim Gendern entsteht Urin” (de)
(en: “Gendering produces urine”)
“Beim Gendern entsteht Gin” (de)
(en: “Gendering produces gin”)
Visual poems
2025
Intervention in Kunsthaus Graz, Graz, Austria on the occasion of international women's day, 8th of March 2025
click on the photo for more views
My Blog
challengedgames.blogspot.co.at

The CHAlleNGED GAMES blog was conceived with the hope to stimulate divergence thinking and challenge the viewer to rethink one's routines and shift his/her perspective on the status quo.

The blog was initially  dedicated to the CHAlleNGED GAMES series and seeks for extended meaning in playing and its relation to aspects of human existence and production.

As with the time I started to experiment with another system - the language, to apply mathematical logic and seek patterns in words, in the last years my publications are mostly about this part of my work.

CHAlleNGED Games
My Videos
on YouTube
on Vimeo
Vimeo
st.art

Author: Veronika Tzekova
Publish Date: September 27, 2010
Dimensions: 18 x 18 cm, 70 pages
Language: English/Italian

As a manner of artistic creation in many of my recent works I employ existing urban situations, objects, visuals, texts and just add often a small detail, which significantly changes their meaning and/or function.

St.art book includes art works in the period 2004-2010, some still in progress at the time and some as ideas developed during 2010. The selection is made to guide the viewer through an artistic process that lead to the birth of ideas such as Space NRGZers and Dadissuasori.

The book ends with a couple of blank pages, which are to e filled in with sketches and ideas for new works employing the same approach. 

Vimeo




Veronika Tzekova veronika.tzekova@gmail.com