Eniarof N°30 & N°31

In fall 2021 Niklas and I had a very special opportunity to participate in Eniarofs in Costa Rica and Mexico. Eniarof is a pop-up fun fair format founded by Antonin Fourneau, which has taken place in numerous cities. Usually the idea is to build a fun fair in about one week with local students, teachers and artists. The 30th edition of Eniarof was organised in San Jose in Costa Rica and followed by the 31st edition in Guadalajara, Mexico. These two events were made possible by our wonderful colleagues at French Alliances in San Jose and Guadalajara as well as the German Embassy in San Jose and Goethe-Zentrum Guadalajara. In both cities we also had the pleasure to work with our good old Eniarof colleagues Antonin, Lawrence, Guillaume and Eric.

In San Jose Eniarof was warmly welcomed in Amon Solar, a cool venue for music and alternative cultural activities. Like in other Eniarofs, we first formed teams with the local participants and brainstormed together how to fill the house with DIY games and other attractions. I built a game called Magical Photo Safari in which a player has to “take photos” of animals by pressing buttons on a modified baby toy camera. The more photos you capture, the more points you get, until the time runs out and the sun sets. Several other peculiar games came out of the intense workshop-week, which you can see in the photo album. We had lots of curious visitors and the event ended with an exciting Tombolarof-lottery, where leftover used toys and other colourful materials were given out.

In Guadalajara we focused on experimental mini-golf, an idea that Antonin had been exploring recently. After teaming up we built 10+ experimental golf tracks, most of which included quirky electronic special effects. The visitors of French Alliance could go through the tracks one by one, calculating points along the way. Many of the tracks required, not only precision with a golf club, but also avoiding moving obstacles, or traveling with a space elevator or screaming out loud. For my track I used an old map of Germany, which was from the local Goethe-Zentrum. The track was called Little trip to Munich and players had to maneuver the ball from Guadalajara to Munich using a tiny golf club along an Autobahn, facing tricky obstacles.

See also:

• Photo album of Eniarof attractions