‘The Manifest’ was a live roleplaying panel show held during Amsterdam Museumnight 2018 at the Willet-Holthuysen - a museum restoring the house of a 17th Century Dutch art collector. ''The Manifest is an RPG about immortality, deep time, objects with complex histories and the self-preservation instincts of institutions that house them. Museum curator Rixt Weiringa, conservator Thijs Boers and artist Timo Demollin were invited as panel guests with professional stakes in the museum, and roleplayed as ghosts cursed to haunt it forever. By telling a story of spirits eternally collaborating to prevent the museum’s closure, the narrative moved aleatorically forward and backwards in time simultaneously - secrets about the ghost’s past lives were revealed, and speculations about potential threats and changes to the museum stretched long into the far future. These details were generated by questions put to the panel by the game and its audience, asking them to draw on their experiences as the basis for improvisation. The resulting narrative spanned thousands of years, featuring communion with woodworms, the foiling of a Prince of Orange by endangered magpies and, ultimately, the museum becoming the last remaining art collection in human culture.
Credits
Participants Rixt Weiringa, Thijs Boers, Timo Demollin
Documentation Melanie Lemahieu
Thanks to Michela Trovato Giancardillo, WOW Amsterdam, Willet-Holthuysen Museum