Above: Selects from the hand-printed series featured in the MB textbook.

MAROONING BODIES

Services: Creative Direction, Research Consultation, Graphic Design

(2022-Present)

A time capsule from the future. A call to new gods and the end of carceral systems. A game that brings players together to build liberatory communities.

Marooning Bodies facilitates players in collectively imagining decision-making processes, resource distribution, responses to harm, community rituals and traditional practices for our futures. The game asks:

How do we create the conditions to be in healthy relationships with ourselves, each other, the land, and the natural world?

(Right) Back Cover of the MB Manual.

(Left) Front Cover of the MB Manual.

Marooning Bodies has been in development for 3 years. It has been play-tested in Ghana, Senegal, Morocco, and across North America including: USC, CSU East Bay, National Sawdust Creative Forum (NYC), and Norco Prison. The first complete prototype was launched in October 2024 at the Women and Dance Leadership Conference, and is poised for support through a critical game residency from the Feminist Center for Creative Works in 2025.

Marooning Bodies serves as a tool to:

  1. Further investigate our current social structures

  2. Practice relationship building skills

  3. Tap into our senses to dream with the knowledge of our whole bodies

  4. Engage in nuanced discourse

  5. Archive future histories

(Left) Intergenerational dance created through a game workshop at the Women in Dance Conference. 2024.

(Right) A page from the MB textbook/manual. Featuring relics of dance and fire from the future.

TESTIMONIES

“During an education research project involving the game at the University of Southern California, one player described the game as cultivating a kind of direct people-to-people diplomacy from below, challenging the imperial assumptions that are often baked into the design of games about international and inter-communal negotiations. They imagined the game could be an alternative to diplomatic simulation programs in high schools and colleges (e.g. Model United Nations).”

– Coopilton M. (2023). “Critical Game Literacies and Afrofuturist Development”(Publication no. 30633194). [Doctoral dissertation, School of Urban Education Policy, USC]. PDQT Open.

“I want to thank you about this workshop. It helped me to know more about what I want my community to look like, how to work in a group, and to discover more people. It was really nice to meet you and hopefully we will see you again.”

– Aya Oihbi

“I was delighted to be part of today’s workshop, it was really interesting and beneficial. I really enjoyed the discussion I had with my friends in class about different topics. It also provided me with a lot of new ideas and alternatives to what we can possibly do to build a better community. So I want to thank you for offering us this opportunity to brainstorm and look forward to change. I also would like to learn more about PIC abolition.”

– Diyae Alami

(Left) One side of 1/6 biome cards. Imagery painted by Kenneth Webb during his time at Lancaster State Prison for the game.

(Right) Opposite side of 1/6 biome cards. Players pull a card at the start of the game to determine the setting in which their community will live.