name: alice / age: 21 / profession: student / location: Antwerp / reference: my suitcase of paper cut-outs waiting to be repurposed.
playfulness
all work and no play. it is extremely common for us to juxtapose work and play, to consider them diametrically opposed. for certain mid-twentieth century avant-garde movements, including the situationists, for instance, work was nothing less than a crime against humanity, and play the means to overcome the tyranny of work. this opposition between work and play did not emerge without good reason: not only is work usually characterized by the way it is structured and institutionalized (as in formal employment), as well as by its remuneration (though many counter-examples exist here, including domestic work, of course), what also sets it apart is that it is determined by functionality. work is a means to an end – productivity – whereas play is its own purpose, if it has to have one at all. these two distinct areas become more blurred with the gamification of the economy and with corporations, which shall not be named, encouraging employees to play ping-pong with each other. still, for most of us, in times of the increasing functionalization of everything, with an ever rising stress on (and because of) demands for productivity, the liberating potential of play as indeterminate activity, the potential of play as resistance, is very real.