Tom K Kemp: The Fifth Fire

This game is set in our present reality, and centers around a series of negotiations between a group of human negotiators and the element of fire, which has gone on strike. For the duration of these negotiations, no combustion can take place - from forest fires, industrial power and weaponry, to ovens, candles and cigarettes.

The game is highly open and interpretive based on the context and players: for example, the precise details of the narrative—such as the means of comprehension and communication of the element of fire, the positive and negative global consequences of its strike, its demands, the ultimate decisions and concessions of the strike negotiators, and whatever new deal is brokered —are all authored by the participants and are reinvented with every iteration of the game.

The roleplay workshop will take place over two days, October 14th and 15th, in the evening from 5:00-9:00 PM. It will be held in the Mala Dvorana/ Small Hall at Pogon Jedinstvo. Attendance is open to all, with any playstyle. No experience whatsoever with roleplay, performing, or negotiation is required, and all that’s needed is a willingness to speculate, discuss and negotiate. Registration is open until October 10th via email: lovro.japundzic@gmail.com. Places are limited!

Tom K Kemp employs roleplaying game design, animation and filmmaking to tell collaborative stories about complexity and the humans who constitute it. Working through the roleplaying game form to combine political simulation and speculative analysis into semi-improvised group storytelling, participants are invited to parse systems, complicate common narratives, and synthesise an array of knowledges into plot, dialogue, diagram and performance. In his film practice, non-actors—often selected for their professional expertise—portray versions of themselves within improbable and emergent fictional scenarios. Without clear context, introduction or exposition, the viewer must navigate the systems at work in the film, and the roles and identities of the performers, who engage with their paradoxical surroundings with conviction and uncanny naturalism. By conflating global systems, political metaphor and organisational infrastructure with genre fiction, players’ personal experience and ludic tangents, his works attempt an evocation of the emancipatory weirdness of group agency and the unintended consequences of making models of the world.

Recent publications include ‘Dead Minutes’ and ‘Gackling Moon’ with Patrick Stuart.
Recent group exhibitions include ‘Homunculus’, Two Queens, Leicester, ‘Weird Hope Engines’, the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham, ‘Rehearsals for Reality’, osmo/za, Ljubljana, and ‘Occult Economics’, Huidenclub, Rotterdam. Tom has previously worked with the EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, La Casa Encendida, Madrid, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, and QUAD, Derby.
Residencies include Cité des Arts International, Paris, Triangle-Astérides, Marseille, and Rupert, Vilnius. Tom is an alumni of School of the Damned class of 2017, and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, 2022-23