▓ The Boar Attack. The first episode of the Euro-medieval saga

It may have been a year or so ago that we reminisced together about the Dungeons & Dragons games and our time spent in its fictional worlds. On the one hand, in the position of the lair master (narrator), it was about creating such worlds, their inhabitants and plot possibilities; on the other hand, in the position of the player, it was about enjoying the unlimited depth of the fictional world. It was a social event for everyone. Through this game it was possible to creatively achieve a certain liberation. Maybe that's why we remembered it in the situation you just described.

Yes, I think we both saw in Dungeons & Dragons the intersection of our artistic interests, and we saw its potential, not only in the necessity of group work that the game directly requires, but also in the way it structures collaboration: player(s) - dungeon master. And building alternate or, as you write, fictional worlds using a role-playing game (RPG) system could allow us to move out of the stasis we've been thrown into. But this step is not so simple. In my mind's eye, I've gone back to my days as a cave master setting up endless adventures - everything was easy and self-contained. Much has changed since then, and so when we now attempt to return to the worlds of the 1990s, it no longer feels at all spontaneous or joyful. It's with great difficulty that it gets into this world at all, and if it does, I've forgotten what world it is, lost the map, or don't understand its legend. When we tried to play in this world, it was difficult.

The basic problem you're talking about is believability. Before, it wasn't hard to play our roles as if we didn't know about the fictional nature of the world. It's just that the worlds typical of the 1990s D&D don't hold up today. If we want to play, we must create a world we can believe in - a Eurocentric world. It will undoubtedly reflect something of the time we are in, but what it will ultimately look like neither of us know exactly - there is no cave master to present us with a map of it. Rather, there are multiple cave masters, and none of them quite know what the world looks like. The only clue remains that believability - a quality that we agreed in our discussions together comes with a certain responsibility.

Creating a Eurocentric world is a matter of many small steps. Each step is the realisation of one of the possibilities of what we are able to believe and accept today. An attack by a boar, as opposed to an attack by a dragon or a terrorist, is a true Eurocentric event. The way of responsibly building an alternative world of the Euro-medieval - a building based on taking into account what we like (the Middle Ages, adventure, fiction), but also what we and others are going through in the here and now - is the way of becoming believable to the other - the spectator.

In the exhibition Attack by a Boar, subtitled The First Part of the Euromedieval Saga, the viewer sees eight Euromedieval tables (Halina Pawlowska's table is not there), at which the exhibitors will play out individual adventures during the opening and exhibition (15.1 and 12.2). After playing, the game aids - maps, notes, diaries, dice - remain on the tables. The narrative itself is processed into a soundtrack, which echoes in the exhibition from a white bag full of gold euro coins.