Odraz 2012

The travelling larp conference Odraz, organized by the Moravian LARP association, took place between March and April in Blansko, this time with subtitle “Take off, while you still can”.

The whole event was accompanied by a line of apocalyptic news from NASA and various world media, concerning the end of the world (the Mayas skipped a few months). Surprisingly, there was no panic and even no orgies, on the contrary, lectures took place despite the nearing end of the world. Perhaps the only attempt at commencing orgies was the performance of the Abanico dance group, but that failed to succeed.

This years’ Odraz was mostly focused on PR, the Internet and the larping community and most of the lectures was concerned with these topics. However, this also meant that the programme was not very interesting for most of the players and the whole event was directed at organizers. But even those have not arrived in very big numbers and the conference suffered from the low attendance.

I know that we fight with larp propagation quite a lot in these parts and that was apparent on the propagation of Odraz itself. For myself I can say, that too narrowly focused programme, especially on this topic, put me off a bit, and had I not been asked to make photographical documentation from Odraz, I would not have come at all.

But I can’t only criticize Odraz, I have to compliment the organizers for the general pace of the event, as well as for the foreign lecturers they have invited (and on whom it was visible that they talk about something they are professional at). I should also praise this year’s almanac, though I was surprised by its partial bilingualism at first – the articles have Czech and English annotation and information about the author and the article itself is only English or Czech, depending on how the author wrote it.

Should I assess the whole event, I have to say it was not bad, but next year it would deserve a conceptual change, broadening its topics and therefore interesting a wider variety of participants.