Jamie MacDonald

We know what's real because we've decided what is real, together. What happens when you try out a new reality?

Jamie MacDonald is a Canadian artist who's been living in Finland for 14 years. He started in theatre, went to performance art, and is now doing stand-up comedy and games.

He will give us a talk about REALITY. To him reality is a social phenomenon: we've decided what is real together. He’ll talk about what happens when you try out a new reality, when you fundamentally change what you thought was unchangeable about yourself: it requires that everybody around you agrees that your new reality is in fact real, and not just your imagination. To him the subject is very personal: in his case it relates to a gender transition.

• It takes a society to change a single person, he says.

To Jamie creativity is a positive force in people, and something that happens between them, too. We are beings who play, all the time, whether it's a game, or with words, or with sounds, or ideas, or machines and objects. We create and play because it gives us a satisfaction like none other. His talk will be about live-action role playing games, test driving realities and putting a new reality in place for yourself.