ANNE YONCHA

Vice Versa: rock-paper-scissors

Green Space Studio, Long Island City NY, May 2025

An interdisciplinary performance conceived, rehearsed, and performed over 48 hours. Organized by Vice Versa Collective, featuring collaborators Daniel Townsend, Brendan Sweeney, Elena Collins, Valerie Green, Sarah Albee, + Bri Barton

rock-paper-scissors combined live music, graphic notation, performance painting, movement, textile, and projection to explore themes of play, zero-sum gaming, + geography and settlement patterns of Long Island City. Photos from the performance and rehearsal process are below:

Anne’s RPS prompts:

Phrases vocalized and performed linking rock-paper-scissors to geology to rock, human settlement patterns to paper, and sudden shifts and rifts to scissors (Thinking of Richard Serra’s verbs: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/152793):

Rock: layer / impact / crush / weight / compress / deposit / erode / underneath / shift / sand / slide / slip / fault / converge / pack / sustain / build / hide / accumulate / aggregate / metamorphose / ground / archive / metabolize / migrate / to have a center and an edge / to make an impression / a subsurface / alchemy / a combination of precious and dirt / “to believe in something that’s not always visible” – painter Candida Alvarez

Paper: subsume / cover / flex / ply / interweave / connect / traverse / skin / costume / hide / contact / crumple / fold / flatten / tangle / mesh / warp / wrap / plane / coat / obscure / bend / collapse / sheet / roll / margins / two sided / a partial view point / across layers and lines / planar / both plastic and brittle / gridded and wrapped / surface for translation and transcription / substrate for creation of illusion, sharing of information / place to collect, organize / has a center and an edge / can take an impression

Scissors: slice / separate / reveal / rupture / break / cut / sever / open / shock / oppose / insert / hybridize / jump / copy / integrate / manipulate / vary / transfer / conjugate / collage / combine / detach / pluck / resurrect / salvage / rewind / revive/ fundamentally change / mutate / shuttle / interrupt / swap orientation / synthesize / gather / impact / directionality / schism / rift / sudden action / dichotomy

The game:

Simultaneity

Sudden reveal

Choice

Competition

Dialogue, need 2, cohabiting

Only 2, limited dialogue, limited toolkit

Redundancy

Negotiation of territories

Cooperation

Uncertainty, randomness, arbitrariness? But human psychology is not random

Arbitration

Infinite loops

Behaviors that occur more often than chance would dictate

“your hand begins in the form of rock and it is easiest to keep it that way”

Player bias against streaks

Human readability and poker faces

“a game of player unpredictability”

signals vs noise, reading each other

Further reading: