Marie LeBlanc Flanagan is an artist working in the playful spaces between people, especially related to connection and community. Marie builds experimental video games, playful installations, and cooperative experiences and has an enduring fondness for the possibilities of trash.
Marie will be presenting two interactive “game poems” at Pique winter edition on December 14, and recently released a protest game called Loser Lane about “the terrifying reality of biking in Toronto without bike lanes.” This game is a response to Doug Ford’s plan to limit, and even remove, existing bike lanes across the province. As an avid cyclist, Marie recently found themself biking in the “loser lane,” a non-lane between parked cars and moving traffic; a non-lane with ambiguous and shared usage between cars and bikes and Marie. Caught in the middle of it all, Marie felt the weight of the world, wishing for nothing more than to build their own playground of brightly-coloured code. A world where we all lose, or all win together. But is there ever really a winner in the loser lane?
Read Marie’s account from the loser lane below, and grab your tickets to Pique on December 14 to explore more of Marie’s game design philosophy and experience their interactive game poems in-person.
The following text is written by Marie LeBlanc Flanagan.
Content warning: Aggression, cycling
This weekend I biked to the makerspace to learn to weld.
Wearing heavy gloves and a protective helmet that turned the entire world to darkness, I moved molten metal. Metal fuses with metal. With a good weld, the binding can be stronger than the pieces themselves.
It was good to get out. For two weeks, I’d been glued to my couch, making a tiny protest game about the terrifying reality of biking without bike lanes. Doug Ford is removing the bike lanes in Toronto now. Now? Now, as we choke on wildfire smoke, as ecosystems collapse from undrinkable water and unbreathable air, we’re removing the bike lanes?
Sometimes when I can't handle my feelings, I make games. It's an addictive thing to build an entire world, a universe where you can solve every problem.
Somehow I tore myself away from my couch and rode to the welding workshop. I love biking. Even in November, I float through bike lanes in freezing autumn drizzle, cozy in my rain gear. The bliss of gliding smoothly through the streets. I love being on my bike.
Even in a bike lane, I’m watchful. I’m scanning for cars texting and pulling out of driveways, cars pulling a sharp right turn, cyclists swiping Tinder, tourists stepping into the path. It sounds intense, but it's more of a soft awareness, a background hum while I glide along, hand gently on the brakes. A strong concrete barrier holds the giant metal death machines at bay.
So my bike ride is beautiful, like always. I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be learning to weld. I’m dreaming about glowing molten metal when I pull onto a street without a bike lane. Ahead of me, a cyclist is arguing with a car. They are blocking my path. My heart beats faster as I get closer.
The cyclist yanks his phone out, filming the couple in the car. "You need to give me one metre of space, it's the LAW,” he shouts. They shout back, “YOU have to give us one metre TOO.”
It’s true. We’re in what I call the “loser lane,” a non-lane between parked cars and moving traffic. The rules are complicated. If we take the entire lane, cars hate us. We’re slower than cars. But if we stay in the loser lane, we risk death with every opening door, every parking car, every sudden right turn. We don’t belong anywhere.
I pull up behind them and try to help. "I know it's stressful for everyone," I say. "We're just trying to stay alive out here." The couple in the car say, "We KNOW, we're cyclists TOO.” I nod in a friendly way. I hope it’s over. The cyclist says, “This is my life. My LIFE is more important than your convenience.” A fair point.
The couple in the car shout, “DON’T SPIT AT US”. And then he really does spit at them, a cartoonish spray from his angry mouth, like PSSSSHHHTTTTTTT.
The car immediately lurches forward and peels away.
But it’s not over. The car stops with a screech, doors flying open in perfect unison as the couple shoot out of the car howling, "YOU WANT TO GOOOO!!!!!???"
I do want to go.
My feet are instantly on my pedals. Get me out of here.
I maneuver around the cyclist, then steer wide to avoid the angry couple racing towards him. I steer so wide I am almost in the middle of the road. But the husband locks in on me and starts coming for me with full rage.
"I have nothing to do with this," I say in terror. He comes straight for me, assaulting me, knocking me from my bike to the ground in the middle of the road.
It feels like slow motion. It takes forever to hit the ground. Everything goes dark for a few seconds. And I return to reality: I am on the ground, tangled in my bike. He is shouting at me, "GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!"
I don’t get up.
It will be difficult for him to fight me down here on the ground, tangled up in my bike. I don't want to spend any more time with him up there. The ground feels safer.
People appear from nowhere and gather on the sidewalk. Traffic is stopped in both directions. I try to get up and find that I'm gasping over and over, I can't find my breath. The woman from the car has my bike, she's confronting her husband, "What have you done?" He hangs his head, muttering, "I thought it was his wife, I thought it was his wife, that's why I did it." She says, "They weren't even together. What have you done?"
I make it to the curb. People ask me what happened, but the only words I know are: "I have nothing to do with this." The bystanders nod in confusion.
A new man appears at my left elbow, has he been there the whole time? He introduces himself, gently. He then introduces me to his daughters, by name, formally. I am bewildered. Why am I meeting people? Oh no, were these children in the car?
Store owners offer help. Everyone wants to help, but I can't imagine what I might need help with. I wish they would give me back my bike. I can’t feel anything. I wish we could all hit undo.
The wife from the car comes to me, "Ignore him—what do you need? What do you need? Ignore my husband. Do you want our contact? What do you need? What do you want?" Her husband stands behind her, head hanging low. I look at her face and see a glistening glob of spit on her face. The blob is streaked with phlegm, wobbling from her worried face.
Looking at that glistening glob, I understand her anger. And even his anger, in a way. It's not a beautiful thing to see someone you love with a stranger's snot blob quivering on their face.
Suddenly I worry about the woman from the car. Does her husband often lose his temper? He didn’t think twice about coming at me. Does he hit her? Can I help her? Unfortunately for everyone, I continue to repeat, "I have nothing to do with this" like a broken wind-up politician doll.
Somehow, with the infinite luck and love of the universe, I get my bike back and leave with the kind man and his daughters. We walk together a few blocks. He asks me what happened and finally I have words. I tell him what happened, in a jumbled mess of events: the argument, the spitting, the man coming at me. He says in a tight voice, "That would have been very different if I had seen that." He tells me their address in case I need anything. I’m so grateful to him.
I decide to go learn to weld. I am very close to the makerspace and a long bike ride away from home. And I really want to learn to weld.
So I do.
You should know I did learn to weld that day.
At night, I lay in bed in disbelief. I doubt my own memory. I don't want to live in a world where people do that; it seems easier if it didn't happen. I wonder what happened to the spitting cyclist. Did he feel guilty about leaving me behind? Did he catch it all on video? What if his video shows that I've exaggerated the assault? Or worse, if his video shows that it all was more intense than I am allowing myself to remember?
The irony of the bike incident is unbelievable. Biking on a street without a bike lane, getting assaulted. It’s straight out of my game. It’s like there is a cosmic playwright who is writing events in reverse order.
One of my core beliefs in this world is that people are all beautiful at their core, doing the best they can with what they have. But sometimes things happen that shake that belief. I want to keep my eyes on the complicated beauty of humans, not on the crushing rage that comes from us when we are squeezed too hard, for too long.
Everyone's squeezed so hard these days – no time, no money, no space to breathe. Commuting to an underpaid job to work for an insatiable boss, drowning in debt for a life that you never chose in a world that has never given you a fair shot, and someone is cutting you off and giving you the finger, and traffic is gridlocked, and the check engine light is on, all the check engine lights are on in your entire life, and there's a rattling sound from deep within your soul asking why, why is any of this happening and you are stuck, so deeply stuck in life and in traffic burning gas you can't afford to waste and you look over to see an empty bike lane. At this exact moment, the bike lane is empty, and it takes half the road.
I get it.
I make tiny games about the spaces between us. Games about the sticky stuff: glues, borders, seams, edges—metaphorical and real. Like bike lanes, where the edges between us can mark the difference between life and death. Games about the ways we are bound together. Like welding, where the joint can be stronger than the original pieces.
Grab your tickets to Pique on December 14 to explore more of Marie’s game design philosophy and experience their interactive game poems in-person.