LINGO BINGO
IN PROCESS – SUMMER 2024
Photo by Sihan Cui
Lingo Bingo is a participatory public art project with multiple site specific iterations. Iterations in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx were presented through Korea Art Forum’s Shared Dialogue, Shared Space in 2024. Brooklyn iterations are coming in 2025! Scheduled dates as follows (subject to change – RSVP for updates):
2024
Bowne Playground, Flushing, Queens – Saturday 6/8, 6/22, and 6/29 from 12 to 4 p.m.
NYC Summer Streets, Harlem, Manhattan (125th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd) – Saturday 8/3, 8/10, and 8/17 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
NYC Summer Streets, Mount Hope, Bronx (East Tremont and Grand Concourse) – Saturday 8/24 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront, Mott Haven, Bronx (56 Lincoln Ave) – Saturday 9/7 from 12 to 3 p.m.
María Sola Community Greenspace, Mott Haven, Bronx – (128 Lincoln Ave) Saturday 9/21 from 2 to 6 p.m.
Inwood Hill Park, Inwood, Manhattan – TBD
2025
Opening Essential Shore / Permeable Future, Bay Ridge, Brooklyn – Saturday 4/19 from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Car Free Earth Day, Sunset Park, Brooklyn – Saturday 4/26 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
NYC Summer Streets, Crown Heights, Brooklyn – Saturday 8/23 from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Lingo Bingo offers an opportunity for neighbors from the community to bridge language and cultural barriers: to speak, hear, and understand the “voice of the other.” The project draws on the vernacular visual language and play mechanics of the game Bingo, replacing the numbers with words and phrases in multiple languages to create a low-risk, playful setting for participants of diverse cultural backgrounds to discover shared values.
For more info, RSVP below with the date/s you’d like to attend:
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(Flushing iteration)
Lingo Bingo is a game for 2-4 players. To begin, each player selects one of the four Lingo Bingo boards/mats to play on, and places a red dot on the center square of their board – this is a free square.Players take turns selecting a word/phrase on their board in any language they chose, reading it aloud to the group (the facilitator, a translator, and the other players can assist with reading/pronouncing the word/phrase as needed), and placing a red dot over the selected word/phrase. All the other players repeat the word/phrase aloud, placing a red dot over the word/phrase if they find it on their board (in the same language).
The objective is to place 5 dots in a row, vertically, horizontally, or diagonally to achieve a “Lingo Bingo.”
There are 10 words/phrases in 5 languages: Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Hindi, and English. Not every word/phrase is on every board in every language.
WILD CARD
Alternately, players may play a wild card on their turn in one of two ways. They can select an existing wild card from a previous game or, if they speak a language that is not represented on the board, they can create a NEW wild card. To do this they write any one of the 10 words/phrases on a blank word/phrase card in the language they speak and read it aloud to the group. As before, players repeat this “wild card” word/phrase, but they can match it in ANY language on their board. For example: A player who speaks Italian could write the word FAMILY in Italian (LA FAMIGLIA). All the players then match the word FAMILY on their board in whichever language they choose.
The facilitator may use this “wild card” option to move the game forward.
AFTER THE GAME
Players are invited to suggest other words/phrases from their language/culture they feel would be a good addition to the game. Players are also invited to select a word/phrase card to take home with them as a tangible anchor for their memory.
The Flushing iteration was in 5 languages: Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, Korean, Hindi, and English. Wild cards (see How to Play Lingo Bingo above) in Finnish, Italian, Lënape, and Taíno have been added to game play thus far. Thank you to Hsiao Chen, Nancy Gallagher and Jessica Lagunas, and Heng-Gil Han for their assistance with the Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, and Korean translations respectively. Photos by Sihan Cui.
Shared Dialogue, Shared Space was selected to participate in NYC Summer Streets, providing the opportunity to present an iteration of Lingo Bingo in Harlem on 8/3, 8/10, and 8/17.
There are 7 languages in the Harlem iteration: Spanish, French, Arabic, Wolof, Haitian Creole, Taíno, and English – split across the 4 boards to encompass the wonderful diversity of the community. Thank you to Aminata Chabi Leke and Mbacke Thiam of AfriLingual for their assistance with the Wolof and French; to Waël (Al) Kabbani and his mom for their assistance with the Arabic; and a special thank you to Priscilla Colón of Casa Areyto for her guidance and support with the Taíno (see INWOOD for more).
A number of wild cards were contributed by participants in Harlem: in Russian, Irish (Gaelic), Dutch, and an entire set of 10 cards beautifully hand written in Bengali (Bangla) script by Muhammad Shahidullah.
SUMMER STREETS
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
Photo by Jack Wang
There are 6 languages in the Mott Haven iteration: Spanish, Taíno, Nahuatl, Lënape, Twi, and English.
The first of three events took place at the Bronx Summer Streets in Mount Hope. Three boards were produced: one specific to Mount Hope included Twi (Akan) to represent the approximately 5000 members of the community originally from Ghana. The other two boards are specific to Mott Haven, each centered on the location of two events to be held at Willis Playground and María Sola Green Space respectively. One of the boards was carried over from Harlem Summer Streets to round out the set of four.
A change of location for the Willis Playground event provides an opportunity to add a fourth board specific to Mott Haven, in solidarity with South Bronx Unite’s ongoing mobilization for the Mott Haven-Port Morris Waterfront Plan: featuring blue and green squares to represent the realization of the plan. This essential green space will provide a counterbalance to the environmental pollution that has plagued this community. Read more about this on the South Bronx Unite website.
The free square is offset on the waterfront board to coincide with the location of the event. María Sola Green Space is also visible, one of the very few public spaces where the earth is not paved over. Lenape features prominently (along with the indigenous languages of Taíno and Nahuatl), as the community learns the lessons and embraces the wisdom of the original stewards of this land. The house of Jonas Bronck was near the intersection of Bruckner Blvd and Willis Ave: it was here that the Dutch took possession of (stole) this land from those that served and protected it for generations.
MOTT HAVEN
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Nancy Paredes
Photo by Ana Cordeiro
Photo by Nancy Paredes
There were three Shared Dialogue, Shared Space iterations originally planned for 2024, with three dates in each location: Flushing, Inwood, and Mott Haven. When SDSS was selected to be part of NYC Summer Streets, those locations shifted to accommodate 3 dates in Harlem, and one in Mount Hope. The Inwood iteration artwork, completed just prior to this shift, is in 5 languages: Spanish, Hebrew, Lënape, Taíno, and English. The inclusion of indigenous languages in this iteration provided an opportunity to address colonial bias in language associated with the immigrant experience.
For example, through the gracious guidance of Priscilla Colón of Casa Areyto, AXÍJIRA TAÍNO (Taíno Awakening) has been substituted for AMERICAN DREAM, while MELTING POT has been omitted from the Taíno translation, as the term implies erasure.
IMMIGRANTS ARE WELCOME HERE sounds very different in the shadow of genocide. A Lënape analog: TËMIKÈKW. NULELÌNTÀM ÈLI PAÈKW. (Come in. I am glad that you all came.) is found in Alëmskakw! (You People Leave!) a story told by Nora Thompson Dean, chronicled on the Lenape Talking Dictionary website.
This iteration also includes a full set of 10 Arabic language wild cards that can be played without an actual presence on the board.
The Lingo Bingo grid doubles as an overhead map of the neighborhood. While this was mostly background information in the Flushing iteration with only the 7 train icon as a locator, it is more visually obvious here with a third of the mat taken up with Inwood Hill Park and Isham Park (in green). The center “free square” in Flushing has moved to the upper right to correspond to the event location in Inwood Hill Park, this is again cut through the mat so the grass beneath is visible. For reference, the A train icon is at 207th Street (running top to bottom) and Broadway (running left to right), and the free square is above Indian Road.
In lieu of an in person Inwood event this cycle, discussion is ongoing about a possible installation of work from the project in Inwood Hill Park. More on this eventuality as it develops.
INWOOD
The generative seed for Lingo Bingo goes back two decades to the World Says No to War demonstrations featuring banners in 14 different languages. See more on my sister site Design for Awareness.
Photo by Diane Greene Lent