1. Editing the writing as I start to make the finals.

• Aiming to finish painting story finals by early Week 10 (8 of 12 currently complete & hoping to re-do a couple of the earlier images)
• Focusing on completing images and dropping into the writing when possible – but I feel it is reading much better since having tutorials

Examples of some non-edited finals:

2. Editing the activity cards as story changes

• As the story slightly adapts, to keep the content of the activity cards (or at least the icons on them) relevant. Working on the tone of the writing much like the content of the short story.
• Material: received some papers from GF Smith which seem appropriate. Opting for three colours. Inside of book is dark red, yellow and blue – so I have chosen brighter shades of these colours for a bit of variety and to lift the overall tone of the project.
• Possibly making the cards for the show by laser cutting the printed paper + card of the same colour. And then wedging the front/card/back together like a sandwich. (Thickness test to follow.)

3. Thinking about the holder and overall finish of the project

• Selecting a card which is thick, but foldable. Again, GF Smith was card stock chosen: in a neutral colour to not detract from the content of the inside.
• Aiming to screenprint over the folder in white ink – this came out well with the screen printed critical publication front cover (show.)

4. Exhibition Considerations

• original intention of using blue limewash paint does not seem a viable option any more (it is not an easily available medium in the UK) but I have researched that making a water/emulsion mixture could work, with careful application. Will paint a sample in Week 10 to see if it work successfully.

4. Thoughts and Immediate Goals

• I would like people’s thoughts on using brown toned cardstock for the project’s folder.
• Keeping track of all the little tasks and keeping to schedule
• Making sure I book appointments for Stores, laser cutting etc – and the purchasing of materials – in advance.

Show work in progress. What’s your main current challenge? How are your practice and journal tackling it?

WORK IN PROGRESS.

aka – this is the messy stage where it’s all over the place but it’s getting there.

Working Title for Project: “A Field Guide To Making Your Own Playground”

– Bit long? Maybe just Make Your Own Playground?

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1. Location drawings in Norfolk – I was depleted of time and creative energy in Norfolk (Week 2) so I instead spent the time really looking at places that used to spark a sense of wonder in me as a child. Here is a series of location drawings when in I was there, to continue gaining a rhythm for natural shapes within my mark making techniques.

 

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2) Anna Ridley lecture (w. Beatrice Alemagna & Robert Sae-Heng) providing insight into making and audience. – A focus on having something to say, placing the audience at the centre of the project, allowing space for the audience’s voice. This Q&A made brought to the forefront for me the need to label the audience I was making for very soon, to give the rest of the project a direction. After looking at A Magical Do-Nothing Day, and its level of literacy, I am placing my audience in the area of 7-9 years old. This talk also made me think at a faster pace for my short story and how important it is that it harmonises with the activity cards I am providing, as well as with the general ethos of the project.

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3) Developing FORMAT, SHORT STORY & ACTIVITY CARDS – I have created a dummy guide of dimensions to help me see the design and everything else happening in a more tangible way. This is helping me to see what is appropriate prior to any dummy books being created. It’s already been very useful for me to gain a feeling of how it feels in the hands (albeit my adults ones), what materials would work for it, printing or cutting requirements I might need to consider early on etc.

Below are some ideas for the instructional cards. I keep adding to this list. They are divided into cards for 1) connecting socially and could be used in the interior spaces 2) observation & opening up 3) creating art which connects to the place, likely to be outdoors .

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4) Short story development: still needs a lot of work and is jumping through a few different renditions at the moment. I created the beginnings of a main character, based loosely on myself as a child to guide the audience through the idea of the project. This character needs refining a lot in order to match my usual visual language, to make the whole a cohesive piece.

Main challenges:

*** personally speaking, I wish to feel as though I’ve caught up with where I should be at this stage in Study Block 3 after a few weeks of disruption/ white page fear – (the plan is to panic now, enjoy later.)

*** think about how all this fits in an exhibition context.

*** now I have planned the format, I can see more clearly that there needs to be an awareness of the dialogue between both sides of the project book. Specifically, the narrative I am building needs to keep relevant to the content on the activity cards. Working on this by: a) Being conscious about keeping consistency in visual / written language and b) Developing the text in a way which does not deviant too wildly from the context of the activities. Consciously engaging and re-engaging with the idea of circle, navigating, being playful.

*** Is this child character development too much of a departure, and a distraction from the overall project? I feel self conscious of this character, maybe because I’m not used to drawing children. Is this nose scary?! (I’ll decide on all of this during this week, depending on whether the short story’s progress feels successful or not.)

Group A:  5m pres: 
Bring your up-to-date module proposal. What’s your main challenge? How are your current practice and journal tackling it?

Up-to-date module proposal

I plan to discover the potential ways in which play, and a sense of place, can connect and what this can mean for the person experiencing this moment. Then I want to explore how these ideas can be channelled into a physical object which encourages a person to experience a sense of place through ludic actions. This has been influenced by two main points:

*** my ongoing interest into practices arising from the Situational International organisation, who were inspired by the Surrealist’s integration of play within practice and the SI’s consequential utilisation of play for questioning the framework of society.

*** Wanting to make an interactive object which is both thoughtful and playful.

I would like to create an item which encourages the audience to reflect upon their own sense of place – either with where they are currently situated, a place they wish to hold onto, or maybe a hope for the future. Essentially, encouraging a personal navigation to the potential comfort we can feel when we consider our connection to a place. 

I hope to continue creating the short, one panel illustrated stories I have been creating since the end of the Mai 150, which are based on memories from my own childhood which are fragmented and seem to be from a child’s perspective of digesting situations through an imaginative alternative view of the world. This is to strengthen my writing and visual storytelling, as well as allowing myself a place where continued print and book experimentation on smaller projects which is continual and open to fresh ideas.

I have begun to process what it is that repeatedly draws me to concepts such as a ‘sense of place’ and ‘mytho/psycho-geography’ throughout this time on the master’s course. I have come to two main reasons: 

* Their combinations provide a space in which to navigate a reflection upon identity and/or culture (either our own or another), in a way that I feel has a tangible outcome. For example, with mytho-geography, you can drift from the physical landscape, into imagination, and back to the place. Here this magical in-between place can be prized open which can strengthen the connection to the land. 

* The potential to articulate playfulness and imagination within more grounded or serious concepts (displacement, trauma, repair.) 

I think that young people would be an appropriate audience for the focus of my 170 project. 

Despite a ‘sense of place’ would be quite a complicated subject for a young person to articulate, providing young people with a feeling of security and giving them agency is important within developmental years. Maybe there is a way to provide this through visual cues and thoughtful questions which never mentioned “a sense of place”. 

I am imagining that the final product will be modular and open to audience input. The hope is the encouragement of fun and allowing imagination to settle in.

What’s your main challenge?

• Deciding whether to integrate the activities with my short stories, or to have the two components separate
• How to incorporate the interactive element of the activity book – will it have blank pages, or a recipe sheet at the beginning, for example?
• Sourcing enough activities for the book. Not sure how many I would like to use yet. List incorporates some psycho-geographic and other site-based activities. Finding it difficult to find a comprehensive list of the above so currently it’s a bit of research from publication + generated ideas from observing my own and others practice/ workshops .

Current practice:

Images from sketchbook / desk:

Current research journal:

For drawing/ structural help:

• Sequential Drawings: The New Yorker Series by Richard McGuire – for a glimpse of quickly resolved narrative
• Toutes Les Mers Par Temps by Alex Chauvel – for an illustrative approach to storytelling which relies on the conventions of mapping
• Pretending Is Lying by Dominique Goblet, Here by Richard McGuire & Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi– to see families interacting with one another in domestic / everyday environments in graphic novels
• Design As Art by Bruno Munari – from the viewpoint of an interdisciplinary designer, which speaks of materials, audience, and general professional/ life experience.
• 1st-9th June – in East Anglia with the plan of visiting some memory locations and drawing from life.

For a wider scope of personal positioning :

• Keeping regular check on East Anglian socially engaged practices and events as well as participating in Cornish ones too.
• online meeting with artist Genevieve Rudd
• online lectures about psycho-geographic and/ or play-orientated creative groups ( Theatre Mundi (France), Trust In Play (Greece) )
• Also compiling a list of potential play- orientated companies (whether that be organisations, toy companies etc) around Europe for the potential of utilising the university’s Work Abroad Scheme

Some essay screenshots:

Potential front cover ideas:

Group B: Extended Essay 5m pres: 3 eg’s of practice (not your own): discuss their relevance to your essay with reference to a specific & named critical voice or text.

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The essay is categorised by divisions of past, present and future ways of creating a sense of place through play, and the following practices respond to these divisions in their own specific ways.

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Critics Voice of Note:

+ fundamentals of play in terms of its role within civilisation: historian Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (1938)

+ autonomy, freedom, expression from play: critic Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (1961)

+ definitions of play/ culture as an infinite game: author James P Carse, Finite and Infite Games (1986)

+ place / play within a sense of place: geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place : The Perspective of Experience, (1979)

+ A selection of more recently (2010+) academic online essays which reflect on place & place.

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Practice Example 1: Joaquín Torres – Garcia (1874 – 1949) in Chapter 3: Reflection

+ (Tuan) Connecting Torres-Garcia to object & social play: children are “tied to activity” whereas adults lean towards connecting to their sense of place because of time, an understanding of ancestry, a life of acquiring objects of sentiment

+ (Carse) Connecting Torres-Garcia to adaptability in practice (a multi-media artist with an interest in a range of applications): surprise is play element which is a “…triumph of the past over the future.” 

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Practice Example 2: Body Isek Kingelez (1948 – 2015) in Chapter 4: Reaction

+ (Okeke-Agulu) in regards to Kingelez responding to his country’s political/ living situation “…as much as these structures can and have been described as Utopian … they’re only so extravagant because the condition under which he and the Congolese lived were also extravagantly oppressive.” – he has a political viewpoint which is underplayed in comparison to his utopian view – (flag colours, standing up to dictatorship through pride.)

+ (Caillois): the consensual nature of play, play as a balancing of particular acts / social cues – Kingelez listening to the sense of his city and embellishing the reality to create an emotional response.

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Practice Example 3: Constant Nieuwenhuys (1920 – 2005) in Chapter 5: Projection

+ (Debord) on Unitary Urbanism (a favour of an ideal metropolis where life is a blend of ambiences rather than a structured society)  

+ (Huizinga) The creation of a play sphere to enter a world where the player relinquishes freedom willingly and is utterly absorbed in their activity – this contributes to their personal sense of place (referred to by contemporary critics / readers of Huizinga as the ‘magic circle’)

+ (Andreotti) “The guiding idea was what Constant called “the principle of disorientation” – a deliberate confusion of spatial hierarchy through obstacles, incomplete geometries, and translucent elements.” 

Group B: 5m pres. Show your work in progress: What’s your main challenge? How are your practice and Research Journal tackling it?

MAIN CHALLENGE/S: 1) Who is my audience? 2) How am I going to make a play object which invokes a sense of place? 3) When do I begin?

In terms of what is influencing my practice, I am currently casting a wide net. This accumulation of information/ inspiration is helping me to narrow down the finished concept for my practical MAI 170 project and helping me to “loosen up” with drawing, getting things physically made, trying new things before I settle into a format for my final project.

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1. Reading/ Writing for the Critical Publication is informing my understanding of the connections between PLAY and a SENSE OF PLACE

– Concepts of play outside of the Western European scholar material:
* Mauri games and their connection to ancestry and place.
* The impact colonisation has had on a) the flexibility of play within learning environments (North America, Australia) & b) the current methodologies put into practice within global relief organisations 

– Huizinga’s Magic Circle:

* The instinctive rules that apply when a person travels into a play-space. 

* Considering how this place is a self-constructed liminal space, a permeable construct, which allows the potential for imagination and an effective method for connectivity.

– The Seriousness of Play:

* The scholarly consensus of the seriousness of play. Anthropogenic thinking discrediting the importance of play in our lives. Within the vernacular, play is usually regarded in two main ways: either as an activity solely for young people, or as a luxury for the privileged few. Neither of these statements are the inclusive truth of play – it predates humans and has unique qualities of changing the way we see. (“participants suggested that in framing the game as ‘art’ (rather than play) seemed to give adults an ‘alibi’ that seemed to deflect possible ‘embarrassment’ from acting in non-sanctioned ways adults normally act.” Luostarinen, 2021.)

* Avant-garde movements/ creatives utilising the subversiveness of play theory to dismantle societal constrictions.  

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2. Observation: Considering how people play

– Reflecting on play, by playing with young relatives and how they react during playtime. Observing young children with occasional work placement. Writing notes on these moments.

– The ways I could format a future local workshop/ focus group to answer more developed thoughts around how the intersection between play & place could benefit them.

– Formulating a questionnaire (currently, created with adults in mind) to open up different opinions on how we consider play: the wellness it provides, as well as the social parameters its definitions impose. Who else should I question? 

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3. Communicating with contemporary practitioners/ creatives

* Sara Hougham-Slade (Falmouth University PhD student, puppeteer, product developer)

Sara was very good to talk to for practice methodology. Her advice was to create a unique product for a unique target audience and that I am currently too vague with my “this project can be for anyone” mindset. But she did like my current consideration of visual over written language as my way to communicate with my project. 

* Katrijn Oelbrandt (graphic designer)

Katrijn’s work for Z33’s ‘In The Eye of the Storm’ 2021 exhibition struck me as a really effective, iconographic method of allowing children to navigate an otherwise bewildering adult gallery space. Oelbrandt employed:

– the playing with interconnecting lines beyond the page 

– recognisable shapes to cut out

– creating a playful physical space which matched the handheld components

– encouraging the audience to understand the exhibition by playing with the project 

* Caroline Ross (natural paint maker)

Ross recommended to me some ways of procuring woad, which is a type of indigo dye grown all over the world but having a revival in Norfolk Broads where it was once in abundance. Experimenting with woad ink in my drawings could become a subtle way of connecting to a place I want to reflect upon.

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4. Experimenting with my own responses to mythogeography and play through various mini projects, workshops etc. This is building my understanding of how I want to display my visual language for my practice outcome. Here are some bits for example:

Group A: Extended Essay: 5m pres.  Bring one example of practice (not your own) and discuss it in relation to two named research sources\ critical theorists.

Joaquín Torres-García created América Invertida in 1943, aged 69, less than a decade before his death. At this point, he had already been working in the Constructivist style for 30 years (ref) and World War II was at its halfway point. [talk about Constructivism.] Torres-García identity was from two countries that were both politically neutral to the War. Yet, socialising and practising his art in artistic social groups around Europe (and briefly New York) until 1934 would have meant he was surrounded by the discourse of pre-War politics. Further, General Franco’s right-wing regime in Spain despite its neutral position, would have also been knowledge and concern to a person with Spanish connections. (ref)

Despite América Invertida being very different in terms of materiality to his toys and sculptures that we have already seen, it is deeply familiar of his previous work. The emblematic line work that JTG had prioritised throughout his earlier practice is dominant, as is pictorial elements to guide us through a territorial narrative. It is perhaps one of his most recognisable images, possibly because of how it synthesises so many of his life’s artistic goals.

With a creative practice that touched upon both his Spanish and Uruguayan heritage (pre and post – Columbian), Torres-García created within América Invertida an emblem, representative of an emerging, future collective Uruguayan voice:

“…the Utopia of the north is embodied in the geographic South, claiming destiny for Torres’s continent and prefiguring political and poetic voices that would prevail and his death.” (Pérez-Oramas, 2015.) 

It is further reassurance of the seriousness with which Torres plays in the realm of his practice. 

Huizinga believed that the “plastic arts” had no real place of residence within his concept of play. (By plastic, he is talking in terms of the adjective for describing something which is “easily shaped or moulded”, as opposed to a synthetic item created with polymer materials. (ref).) He says that “…being bound to matter and to the limitations of form inherent in it, is enough to forbid them absolutely free play and deny them that flight into the ethereal spaces open to music and poetry.” (ref) Throughout the chapter Play-Forms In Art, I take that Huizinga is open to any creative process which demands physicality and community into the performance as an indication of a play-form. He deems the static, process and brief-driven “…architect, the sculptor, the painter, draftsman, ceramicist and decorative artist…” as an individual who is honing a skill. He says there is no room here for playing, until the performance of an exhibition throws the plastic art into a new social dimension. 

But I think we can see play here. JTG’s image is intentionally non-static. Huizinga states earlier, in the chapter Nature and Significance of Play as a Cultural Phenomenon that “…play is based on the manipulation of certain images, on a certain ‘imagination’ of reality” (ref) JTG is manipulating cartography. By flipping the South & partially Central American continent, we are met with an image which is familiar and unfamiliar simultaneously. This uncanny moment sets the mind out of ease immediately; why does this look familiar, is there a reason that this place has been distorted? We are so accustomed to seeing maps in the classical North facing, Mercator Projection 1959 (ref) format that subverting this layout can easily create this moment of the uncanny.

The 1569 Mercator map of the world. Gerardus Mercator, 1569

This is not a dissimilar concept to the psycho-geographic concept of dismantling imagery to create autonomy within a society. [fig] Both images subvert a former recognised visual language to create a new one, for the purpose of marking new potential territories. Huizinga celebrates language as a constantly moving, spatial technique. “In the making of speech and language the spirit is continually ‘sparking’ between matter and mind, as it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty… thus in giving expression to life man creates a second, poetic world alongside the world of nature.” (ref) If we view visual language in the same context, we can see play being an element of JTG’s creative practice. Furthermore, Huizinga describes play as an impulsive system which is engrained within us, to enable us to learn the structure of culture. (ref) Within America Invertida, JTG is taking personal/ collective knowledge of culture and perceiving a future with its alternative form. 

With this play, and we gain an insight into JTG’s perception of a sense of place as well as his understanding of a wider version. Cresswell explains its potentials within unsettlement. Whilst a sense of place’s usual definitions resides in a static moment, he encourages the reader to uphold Doreen Massey’s “…new conceptualization of place as open and hybrid – a product of interconnecting flows – of routes rather than roots.” If we are to add more weight to the sense rather than the place, we can understand that “…an affection based on its fluidity and diversity rather than a coherent sense of unitary identity…” can be achieved. (ref) An artist such as JTG with transatlantic, pre/post-Columbian, Uruguayan identity would undoubtedly be capable of capturing his sense of belonging in this way. 

Bring 3 images (on your blog) that are relevant to your emerging project proposal as well as a rough draft of your proposal progress.

1. Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay/Spain, 1874 – 1949)

a range of objects and drawings by JTG

2) Constant Nieuwenhuys

3) Ludic design / quality and craft.

Practice Project Aims

Please elaborate on the above describing the area of interest you will be exploring, stating what the project sets out to achieve, and listing your aims 

During my final project, I plan to discover the potential ways in which play, and a sense of place, can connect and then how these ideas can be channeled into a physical object. This has been influenced by:

1) my research into Situationist practice, which are inspired by the belief that play has power to dismantle 

2) case studies in which psycho-geographic methods have been utilised to enhance a young person’s perception of their sense of place. 

I hope to navigate my practice back to a zone of making physical, tactile items, and considering playful thinking. I would like to create an item/s which encourages the audience (currently I am thinking about a younger person audience) to reflect upon, their own sense of place – either with where they are currently situated or to connect to their concept of home. The idea is to find ways to help people connect to play, and I hope to achieve this through ludic processes. This may be through a facilitation – led event, or a more static creation which would be intended for independent use. This larger project will probably also be the focus of my contribution to the ending exhibition, and I hope to make use of workshops to investigation a range of appropriate materials.  Additionally, I would like to continue creating short zines to strengthen my writing and visual storytelling, as well as allowing myself a place where continued print and book experimentation on smaller projects which is continual and open to fresh ideas. I have been editing older projects from this master’s as well as creating new mini stories off the back of the Mai 150, as I began to see ways to talk about mytho-geography in an autobiographical context. I hope to continue to be informed by place-based methods and find ways to translate these into written and drawn forms, but this is a much longer project which I hope to progress into the future, and I do not feel it has “final” legs at this point. 

Rationale

Please describe your broader reasons for choosing to undertake this inquiry, indicating its context as authorial illustration

I decided to further my illustrative education because I felt I was struggling with conviction and consistency. By leaning into playfulness, which I began to touch upon during my Mai 140 project Lantern Man, I felt more at ease making. Thinking in 3D, in a product–led way, provided me with a comfortable duality between physical making and creative thinking.

My Mai 150 investigation focused on the historical timelines and cultural contexts of what I self-described as “situationally-inspired practice”, (ie: flâneurism, psycho-geography and mytho-geography.) I am particularly interested in how these experimental techniques can provide one with a sense of place. During my presentation’s research, it became apparent that a sense of place can be emboldened through the person’s connection to the landscape: their autonomy is retained with the avoidance of overly-structured guidance. Because of this research, I felt that place-based creative practice has a role in my future as an authorial illustrator, but with the realisation that I feel the need to create larger, more tactile objects – particularly intended for play, or learning.

I have begun to process what it is that repeatedly draws me to concepts such as a ‘sense of place’ and ‘mytho/psycho-geography’ throughout this time on the master’s course. I have come to two main reasons: 

*Their combinations provide a space in which to navigate a reflection upon identity and/or culture (either our own or another), in a way that I feel has a tangible, achievable outcome.

*The potential to articulate playfulness and imagination within more grounded or serious concepts (displacement, trauma, repair.) 

300 word synopsis for Extended Critical Essay
Indicate the focus of your essay investigation and how it relates to the broader practice investigation. Please include outline indicative bibliography and sources.

My Extended Critical Publication will be closely related to my Practice Project. It will investigate the ways that play can inspire a sense of place for the audience. Currently, I am thinking of the macro and the micro: with the practices of Constant Nieuwenhuys (Netherlands, 1920 – 2005) and Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguay/Spain, 1874 – 1949) respectively being my formative examples.

Both are creatives who sought play within their practice. Both are using play to answer questions about the place people sit within their culture. For Constant, play theory was manifested into the needs of his speculative audience, and for Torres-García, it seemed to be more of a self-reflective discovery. Constant’s interaction with travelling communities gave him a unique cultural perspective into which laid the ground for his concept of an idyllic, ludic-led lifestyle. In this way, he is an architect for potential alternative futures. 

Torres-García, on the other hand, is an artist heavily influenced by the pasts of his dual-heritage: a reverence to pre-Columbian South America and his contemporary view of Latin American culture. Through both his attempted production of wooden “Juguetes Transformables” (transformable toys) and sculpture pieces, a sense of place and play emanates. The architecture of early 20^th century Montevideo is recognisable in Torres-García’s form and colour palette. 

Constant’s association with the Situationist International and their seriousness with regards to play’s power to dismantle, is a descendant of the Surrealist movement. Torres-García, on the other hand, has no known affiliation to this line of theory and actively disregarded the process of Surrealism as lacking introspection.

Regarding the differing ways of perceiving a sense of place, I also would like to research into ludic activities from indigenous cultures. Perhaps there is a difference in games from groups of people, which refer to their different understanding of a sense of place, when compared to the mainly Westernised exposure on the above creatives. I intend my research to be mainly informed by Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga) which is a known influential text about play for the Situationist International. From my current understanding of the text, it is an overarching theory of play within culture, rather than its pedagogic practice. I think it may be useful to also counteract Huizinga with more practically-led play pedagogy such as Montessori, Steiner or Froebel, to see if there is a notion of promoting a sense of place within these structures. 

The Ludic & Place:
The Situationist Internationals at Play.

Situationist International (SI) was an avant-garde philosophical, artistic, and political organisation, predominantly active during mid – 20^th century Paris. It was founded through a mutual concern of the Capitalistic structure which permeated society, particularly in a post-WW-2 France.

It was here that philosopher, creative and key SI member Guy Debord further developed theories supporting his earlier creation of psycho-geography, alongside peers. Dismantlement, or at least an awareness, of the spectacle was key. Debord defined spectacle as the bombardment of graphic representation, which forms a barrier between the public and reality. He regarded this as a deliberate distraction and manipulation tactic created by Capitalism. (Gardiner, 2020)  He hoped psycho-geography would pull on the threads of what Surrealism had initiated – “a synthesis of art and everyday life, and the actualisation of the creative potential of each and every human being.” (Gardiner, 2020)  

In order to disintegrate the spectacle, there was a tactic called the dérive. With a playful, open-ended and experimental mindset, the idea is to drift through layers of cultural atmosphere to reinvent a sense of place.  (Hussey, 2011)  It is a process intended to explore a place with spontaneity and automatism. 

The dérive is therefore one of several ways in which we can witness the ludic influence that the Surrealism movement had on the SI. This is in conjunction with the seminal book all about the theory of play, Homo Ludens, (Huizinga, 1938) which was also a prominent inspiration for the SI. 

It is therefore no surprise that the SI members exhibited creative practice involving play. For Guy Debord, this was manifested into a physical board game The Game of War.  [tbc]

Another example of playfulness within the oeuvre of the SI members can be seen in Constant Nieuwenhuys’ (also known as Constant) antidote to Capitalism: New Babylon. Much like Debord’s Game of War, this was a labour of love for Constant. Spanning decades, the concept is manifested through a variety of materials and presentations to audience.

New Babylon is the concept for a speculative city, where restraints of societal expectations are no longer present in the minds of the inhabitants. Basic human needs are automatically catered to and the inhabitants minds carry no imprint of the past to create any concept of guilt for this lifestyle. 

“The New Babylonian would therefore be able to devote his life entirely to his own creative development. Homo Faber (“man the maker”) whose daily rhythm and place of residence was determined by his work, would be replaced by Homo Ludens (“man the player”).” (Gemeente Museum Den Haag)

Constant was associating play with an ultimate (and arguably hedonistic) sense of freedom. His inspiration taken from Homo Ludens (1938) is evident throughout his practice, and especially within New Babylon. Whilst discussing play as a societal tool, Huizinga states that “…culture arises in the form of play… It is through this playing that society expresses its interpretation of life and the world.” (Huizinga, 1938)

The future spatial requirements of the inhabitants are also taken into consideration. Seen on the above image are several materials, transparencies and angles. The concept was to have a modular world: easy to re-construct, a reflection of the fluid, spontaneous mindset the New Babylonian society has. It is a reminder of the SI’s hope for a society devoid of the spectacle.