A banana taped to the wall, a golden toilet, a pile of candy, and a short paragraph appear on the projector screen. “The motion reads as follows: This house regrets the dominance of spectacle and inaccessible discourse in contemporary art. The round starts in 20 minutes. Good luck!”
Suddenly, the auditorium bursts into a cacophony of groans, laughs, and the scurrying footsteps of students rushing towards the exits to find their debate rooms. My partner and I simultaneously look each other in the eye, and a panic begins to boil deep in my stomach. Spectacle? Inaccessible discourse? Memes I’ve only seen scrolling through Instagram at 1 am? What kind of motion is this?! I rushed towards the front of the stage to ask the tournament director for clarifications, but by then, the narrow pathway was already jam-packed with students having the same idea. There was no time to wait. We had to go find our debate room.
Debate tournaments never fail to stump me with curveball motions. Does a haphazardly placed pile of candy draw meaningful attention as contemporary art? Do gaming companies benefit from aggressively cracking down on ROM hacks? These are all questions that I’ve asked myself during preparation sessions and failed to answer coherently in my speeches. However, I never fail to be amazed by topics that I would otherwise never even consider. In the post-round discussion with fellow debaters and coaches, I learned that the pile of candy was an interactive installation intended for viewers to take pieces of, representing the physical and mental deterioration of a queer artist from HIV/AIDS and social stigma. I learned that entire communities revolve around ROM-hacked versions of cult-classic Super-Mario game cartridges. A flurry of excitement would replace the panic in my stomach as I envision the juicy discussions I will have with my debate club. I then create similar, albeit less convoluted versions of these motions for our own tournaments, planting the same panic and excitement in prospective debaters from across my city. Ultimately, debate challenges me to investigate and appreciate topics I otherwise wouldn’t, and that thrill of learning brings me joy unlike anything else.