Playful Processing

Project Statement

In Western Culture, most associate grief with the loss of a person and less with abstract loss such as divorce, career change, or loss of safety. As a griever seeking alternative methods for processing grief, how does one employ playful practices as a tool outside the traditional processing tools? Our lives are filled with both joyful and painful experiences, and how we communicate these moments take many forms. Some of these forms are unfamiliar, unknown or unexpected, and so articulating these elements are essential for processing grief. Language is a dynamic dance between expression and perception, and as a mediator you learn to listen as well as observe what is said or not said. With these distinctions in mind, I explored communication methods and designed a dialogue tool in the form of a Mad Lib word game, where participants choose their level of engagement in a playful format. Survey and interview input, desk research, as well as my personal experience with grief informed the content for these human-centered stories. Through these polyvocal compositions, we have the opportunity to collaborate playfully by generating new grief narratives in a shared dialogic experience.

Playful Processing invites the participant into a world of serendipitous narratives to explore grief through play. Grief is an unfortunate embodiment of loss that abruptly alters a griever’s narrative. Likewise, processing loss is uniquely individual and universally felt, and how we talk about grief shapes our internal and external relationships with loss. The abstract nature of grief often feels too complex, too heavy, or too unbearable to manage alone. Communication is a powerful tool that either supports or negates experience, and this informs the reconciliation process. Playful Processing explores this pivotal communication through serendipity by asking and promoting the question, how can forms of play holistically support individual grievers?

Artist Bio

Angie M. Wallace believes in the power of vulnerability and the human capacity to transform discomfort into actionable possibilities for a better world. She is a designer, advocate, conflict facilitator, systems thinker, lyrical poet, and artist. Whether playing with metaphor or diving right in, she visualizes difficult subjects through personal narrative, systems mapping, illustrations, and creative writing. Emphasizing the human experience, her work embraces both the ups and downs of lived experience. Angie believes visualization can fill the gaps between interpersonal conflicts and the rigidity of structural systems. In her free time, she enjoys cooking fancy dinners, watching DIY shows, and road tripping. She dabbles with improv and enjoys taking bad photos with her phone. Angie’s favorite time of year is early fall right before the transition into winter, when the nights are still warm and the leaves begin to wither.