Nordic Larp Talks is a series of short, entertaining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling lectures about projects, ideas and design practice from the Nordic and collaborative traditions of live action roleplaying.
In this talk, the editor-in-chief of this year’s Solmukohta book, Liminal Encounters: Evolving Discourse in Nordic and Nordic-inspired Larp. In this talk, she tells you why you should read the book.
Kaisa Kangas is the editor-in-chief of this year’s Solmukohta book, Liminal Encounters, and the 2016 book Larp Politics. Currently, she is writing a non-fiction book about larp for a general audience. Kaisa is also a larp creator with nearly 30 years of experience. She is most known for the larps Halat hisar and Seaside Prison. Kaisa is presently working together with the Amos Rex art museum in Helsinki to create the larp Hyvät museovieraat (Dear Museum Visitors) that will be run in May. She is also the artistic producer of the upcoming Immersion Larp Festival that will be held in Turku in August. She holds a PhD in mathematics and a MA in East Asian Studies.
Editors Kaisa Kangas and Jukka Särkijärvi present the two 2016 Solmukohta (Knutepunkt) books: Larp Realia, and Larp Politics (both available as free pdf downloads).
Jukka highlights the varied content of Larp Realia – ranging from an article about a larp buit around actual fistfighting to the first food recipe in the long history of the Knute-books!
Kaisa talks about the new volume – subtitled “Systems, Theory and Gender in Action” – on the political dimension of larp. Among the topics are themes like refugees, fascism, experiences of larping as gay or trans, larp as labour, viewing larps with political science tools, and so on. A big section of the book is about political larps (including educational larps) from a range of countries. To the editor’s surprise, no articles about internal larp community politics were submitted. This is probably a sign of health!
Kaisa Kangas is a Finnish larp designer who has been playing and making larps for 20 years. She is the fiction lead for the Palestinian-Finnish political larp Halat hisar (State of Siege) that will be run again in June 2016. She is also involved with designing and running educational larps for University of Arts Helsinki. Her other works include Ghost Express (2001-2002, together with Dare Talvitie), a pioneer of pervasive larp. She holds a Ph.D. in mathematics and a BA in Japanese Studies.
Jukka Särkijärvi is a writer, editor, translator, game designer, conrunner and Pathfinder Society Venture-Captain Emeritus from Espoo, Finland. He is currently working on his master’s thesis in English language and literature at the University of Tampere. His previous work include translations of the Stalker and Whispering Road role-playing games, game design on Vihan lapset, a great deal of role-playing game journalism for a variety of publications both on- and offline, and Roolipelikirja, a nonfiction book about role-playing games.
Prior to the Nordic Larp Talks Helsinki 2012, Juhana Petterson the editor of States of Play, the Solmukohta book of the year held a very convincing argument this years book are completely different compared to its predecessors. You can download the book as pdf at the site nordicrpg.fi.
Juhana Pettersson is the producer of the videogame tv-show Tilt and the director of publishing at Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting Nordic roleplaying culture.
He has written a book called Roolipelimanifesti (Like, 2005) and a roleplaying game called Ikuisuuden laakso (Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura, 2009). He edited a collection of roleplaying games called Unelma Keltaisesta kuninkaasta ja muita tanskalaisia roolipelejä with Kristoffer Apollo and Tobias Wrigstad (Pohjoismaisen roolipelaamisen seura, 2011). He lives in Helsinki, Finland.
