Good Game: Youth Insights Visits Recess Activities, Inc.
Jul 14, 2010

 On June 30, the Youth Insights (YI) Summer Intensive particpants headed downtown to visit Recess Activities, Inc., a non-profit art organization that provides contemporary artists with studio, exhibition, and performance space. 

One of Recess’s objectives is to provide audiences with a platform to engage with interactive and process-based contemporary art in a friendly and open environment, and YI’s experience was no exception. Artists Colin Snapp and Daniel Turner invited the teens to perform Good Game, a performance and short video installation work that takes as its point of departure the practice of slapping hands after a sports game as a display of sportsmanship.

The Youth Insights teens and staff jumped into the project, donning baseball uniforms and splitting up into “teams” to reenact the post-game tradition. YI participants lined up in two single-file lines and said “good game” repeatedly while slapping hands with the opposite team, as Snapp and Turner documented it on video. Many of the teens noted that by repeating the gesture in the absence of a sports event, the words “good game” began to seem like a tongue twister and lost their meaning. 

It was great to kick off the first week of the YI Summer Intensive with a field trip that was fun, interesting, and interactive. The YI teens probably didn’t anticipate getting to know each other while wearing baseball jerseys and striped socks, but the shared experience of Good Game was indeed team-building.

The visit to Recess Activities, Inc. was part of the Youth Insights Summer Intensive, a month-long program for teens that introduces them to a wide range of career opportunities in the arts through seminars at the Whitney and field trips to art organizations around New York City.

By Kendra Danowski, Education Intern