YEAR OF THE PIG is a speculative fiction Twine game that jumps between three Chinese identities at “separate” moments in time in order to examine how the historical and political are inseparable from present and future materialities. The game can be viewed through three storylines: that of epidemiologist Wu Lien-Teh and his role in combating the 1910-11 Manchurian Plague; fictional Chinese-American Ashley Wang and her political radicalization(s), and the futuristic collective “Yellow Peril,” whose motivations and ultimate fate will differ depending on the player’s choices. Presented in a non-linear fashion, the game’s experimental chronology reinforces the idea that the historical and political cannot be separated from the material reality of now or the radical possibility of the future. Walter Benjamin writes, “To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize ‘the way that it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger.” To me, this game is a way of articulating questions raised by the course, as well as my day-to-day uncertainties - Can revisiting the past destabilize current understandings of the present? How much is there to mourn? Is there a future here? What about there? What will the world look like for America’s nonwhite and noncitizen populations if things continue the way they are now? Has it always felt like this?
To play it, click here.
- Amanda Chow // Spring 2022 // Santa Cruz, CA, USA //
Above image modified by me through Creative Commons License “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.”
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