A sign at the Royal Scottish Academy said, "Gaugin." Another said, "Foosball Table.^† We need your participation!"

"They must be quite hard up for patrons," I thought. Since it was free, I dropped in.

It turned out that an Austrian artist had built a custom foosball table, using ceramic fertility figures as the "men." For the balls she had balls of felt and two colors of paint, both earth tones; gallery attendees are invited to play. For each game, an assistant puts down a piece of paper at the floor of the table. Each player chose one of the colors: after scoring, a new felt ball, dipped in your chosen paint, was dropped on the table. After the match, they pulled out the paper to reveal a nice two-toned splatter painting formed by the game. During the game, a photographer took pictures, and the players could leave their addresses to have the photos delivered.

The wall text mentioned that sports and competitive table games are traditionally all-male activities, which is what inspired her to use fertility figures as the pawns. Surely the gallery context, and the helpful woman artist (very genial, Yoko-like), had as much to do with permitting/encouraging women to play as did the fertility figures—but one appreciates the symbolism. The wall text also had some blather about the "table" being a place of domestic rituals (Get it? Foosball table!) but that concept apparently ran out of steam before influencing the work. (Would that it hadn't! A foosball table that looked like a dining room table or a kitchen chopping block would be something, eh?)

What I love about interactive performances ("performance art" is a dubious term, you know) is watching people themselves—unsuspecting attendees-cum-performers—deal with the facts of the work. Playing foosball is a particularly good activity to put them to. It requires enough concentration that they're not much worried about what people think. They know people are watching, and that affects their behavior, but they're distracted enough that they don't just mug—you can watch them work at something: the squints and worries, the frustration and relief. Here I saw two young asian girls (friends) play the game, and then a mother and young son. Without putting too fine a point on it, I can easily say that these four players reacted to their games quite differently than the more experienced males I'm used to playing with.

Brilliant concept, good execution; kudos.

^† "Foosball table" is apparently spelled "football table" in the UK.