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Play in the City 2013
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Welcome to the on-line conversation for Play in the City, an Emily Balch Seminar offered in Fall 2013 @ Bryn Mawr College, in which we are addressing the question of how we construct, experience, and learn in the act of play. How is play both structured by the environment in which it occurs, and how might it re-structure that space, unsettling and re-drawing the frame in which it is performed? This is an interestingly different kind of place for writing, and may take some getting used to. The first thing to keep in mind is that it's not a site for "formal writing" or "finished thoughts." It's a place for thoughts-in-progress, for what you're thinking (whether you know it or not) on your way to what you think next. Imagine that you're just talking to some people you've met. This is a "conversation" place, a place to find out what you're thinking yourself, and what other people are thinking. The idea here is that your "thoughts in progress" can help others with their thinking, and theirs can help you with yours. |
Who are you writing for? Primarily for yourself, and for others in our course. But also for the world. This is a "public" forum, so people anywhere on the web might look in. You're writing for yourself, for others in the class, AND for others you might or might not know. So, your thoughts in progress can contribute to the thoughts in progress of LOTS of people. The web is giving increasing reality to the idea that there can actually evolve a world community, and you're part of helping to bring that about. We're glad to have you along, and hope you come to both enjoy and value our shared explorations. Feel free to comment on any post below, or to POST YOUR THOUGHTS HERE.
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What is a street intervention?
There is something defiant about Isaiah Zagar’s mosaics. Cities are built for efficiency, functionality, but not necessarily beauty. Yet, around South Street, a glimmer of light in the gap between two buildings could mean a mosaic of mirrors and color. Zagar’s art is a street intervention, playfully ignoring Philadelphia’s figurative and literal grids to bring subversiveness and spontaneity to its streets.
Zagar’s mosaics are inherently spontaneous. He doesn’t always plan ahead where his next mosaic will be, what it will look like, or where he will get his materials. Many of his mosaics spill across alleyways and onto the back walls of houses, creeping along fence lines as if they’re no longer in the artist’s control. The mosaics fill cracks in alleys with seemingly random words and images. Looking at a map of Zagar’s mosaics is not like looking at a map of a typical art gallery. The mosaics make no distinctive pattern and many do not even appear on the map. In the magic gardens, the route you take is not restricted to a path. Zagar’s art defies the city’s nearly symmetrical grid pattern in its meandering nature. The art is there “to disrupt the everyday actions in the city” by giving people a chance to think for themselves about what it could mean (Flanagan 14).
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My Critical Play
My Critical Play
In Critical Play, Flanagan made the definition that “Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” Before I read this text this semester, I had never heard about critical play at all. Thus, with strong curiosity, I decided to design an activity which can be considered as a kind of critical play. This Saturday, I went to Chinatown to combine play and research with the question about human life—Why people choose Philadelphia to live in?
I will not ask natives this question, because the reason why they live in Philadelphia may be that they are born in the city, or there house located in the city. I want to ask settlers, which specialties of Philadelphia absorb them to let them stay here-- far away from their hometown. Thus, as a player, my goal is to find out the answer during my trip to Chinatown. I rambled along streets and visited stores there. I talked to different people with different jobs and did some interview to collect information.
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subversion - a condescending and diffident definition
According to Flanagan, subversion is “a powerful means for marginalized groups to have a voice”. I try to think of an experience in Philadelphia that corresponds to this, and calls to mind my encounter with a homeless person.When I was exhausted after a walking tour and sat on the ground having a rest near city hall, a deranged straggly old man walked towards me and started murmuring. It was a total shock, as I’ve never encountered a homeless person before, and held a stereotypical fear of them, so I said I don’t understand English and left in a hurry. I wasn’t lying, because I really couldn’t understand a single word he said. But as I walked away I heard a sentence that I could catch, “I just wanna give you a compliment!” I was perplexed—this is the city center, the place on the postcard in airport stores for every newcomer to see, where skyscrapers and banks cluster and every tourist visit, where cleaners work at midnight to keep it spectacular, and yet he felt so at ease despite of the fact that he didn’t have a house and clean clothes. He even offered me a generous welcome as a host, a welcome to the city as his home, a welcome to his world.
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Play in the Chinatown again
What a hot day! Amy and I walk on the street to find our destination-the train station for a long time. Compared to the Paoli Local, the way to R-100 is so long and this transportation is inconvenient for the students in Bryn mawr College. Finally, when we sit on the train, tiredness hit us and the views flashed outside the windows increase such feeling. It seems like we are in a forest, reminding me of my travel way in mountains in Taiwan. Trees fill up the blank space made by sky and sunshine. The music, coming out from the earphones of a man near me, and the tiny bumps made by the train, spread drowsiness among travelers. In Paoli Local, it is seldom to hear the music by others, and the air there is more serious. Here on the R-100, I thought I feel more relaxed.
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Critical Play: The Necessity for Separation of Perspective
When I visited Philly this weekend, I didn’t have much of a plan. I knew that I wanted to visit Elfreth’s Alley, but beyond that I decided to be spontaneous, let serendipity guide me. I went to Philly with Marcia, and we spent a little bit of time walking down the alley, admiring the bright colors on the shutters and doors, the flower boxes, the cobblestone street.
Soon, though, we were tired of admiring. We had the same itch that many do: we didn’t want to just look at something, we wanted to do something. So we started walking, heading towards the more well known area of Old City. On the way there Marcia asked me if I still wanted to go to the Constitution Center. Even though I had previously decided not to go, I thought that we may as well, as it sounded pretty fun when I looked at it online.
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Critical Play is Not Play
All this talk of critical play and plain play reminds me of Anne of Green Gables. I remember reading the book by L.M Montgomery at nine years old and marveling at how Anne was so comfortable with making mistakes and her guardian, Marilla. More importantly, she felt her life had meaning because of her active imagination. I remember she said that “Don’t you ever imagine things differently than what they are? Oh, Marilla, how much you miss.” Anne used her imagination to play in the purest sense of the world: She fashioned all these different lives with her fellow kindred spirit, Diana. She did it for no particular reason other than to keep her wonder for this world alive. She did not play critically, because I think she would’ve said the fun would’ve seeped right out of it. When Flanagan defines critical play as the creation of “play environments and activities that represents one or more questions about aspects of human life,” I strongly believe that critical play is not play at all. I also strongly believe that when you try to inject philosophical questions into your play, it starts to look an awful lot like schoolwork.
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Differentiating between Play and Critical Play
Maybe the best place to start when talking about play is not in the context of a scholarly article, but rather to discover what differentiates play from the work that people do every day of their lives. To start with the obvious, work is obligatory whereas play is a voluntary activity. Work seems to be strenuous either physically or mentally, while play, although oftentimes the same, must also include some form of entertainment or else no one have incentive to participate. For all intents and purposes, our differentiation between work and play agrees with Flanagan’s explanation with one key addition: “In play, the aim is play itself not success or interaction in ordinary life” (Mary Flanagan 5).
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"Critical Play" and a Ghost Tour
Last week when I went into the city, I was not thinking about “critical play” because I had not read Flanagan’s Critical Play: Radical Game Design. However, when I ventured into Philadelphia this week, I was consciously looking at my experience through the lens of “critical play.” Before and after I went on the ghost tour, I was critically thinking, and while I was on the ghost tour, I felt as if I were playing. Writing about the experience now, I feel as if I have answered the question I asked in my last paper: “If people do not write essays about ‘critical play,’ do they ever really understand the importance of it?” “Yes,” it seems like I could say; I did not have to write an essay to think critically about the ghost tour. Still, I am unsure if I were critically playing while on the ghost tour and if “critical play” is possible.
In “Performative Games and Objects” Flanagan argues both that play is “the aim of play itself” (5) and that “critical play” occurs when a person “critiqu[es] the status quo” (6). My most recent trip into the city leads me to argue that a person cannot play and be critical at the same time, but that a person can facilitate critical thinking before and after “play” if she has the intention of both playing and being critical.
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The "Participants" Make the Picture
Before this trip, I thought it was the spectator that made the picture. But yesterday's experience helped me realize that it was not that simple. It is not only the audience makes the picture, but also the performer, the creator and the artwork. These elements together make the "participants", who are actively engaged in the art or playful activities and jointly infuse dynamics and diversity into the work. The art is not complete without either the artist or spectators. A work engenders its true meanings with its participants.
This point was perfectly illustrated in my trip this weekend. On our way back, we ran into a piece of mosaic by Isaiah Zagar in an area that was not fairly close to the Magic Garden. Even if we were rushing for the train, we still stopped there for a while to take a clearer look. Located at the entrance inside an art school, the mosaic was still a shining piece for all of us. Because we had participated in Isaiah's artwork, had tried to find the beauty in every corner of his Magic Garden, and had quietly had a wonderful "conversation" with him through the shimmering art pieces. We were amazed at coming across his mosaic, but the women who sit outside the entrance looked at us strangely and wondered why seeing a colored wall made us so happy. Those women were merely spectators, unlike us. We engaged in Isaiah's work, therefore we were able to fully appreciate this amazing serendipity and understand the importance of this piece.
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Old City
This summer I participated in “Tri-Co”, a program where Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr students discuss social justice, equity, and diversity. During one caucus we touched on the Norristown High Speed Line and how Bi-Co students often refer to it as “sketchy”. What was it about the train that made students afraid or uncomfortable and what exactly did they mean by “sketchy”? The upperclassman agreed that it attracted more minorities and working class people rather than the business men and women that typically use the R5. When I boarded the train on Saturday, I found it to be like any typical New York City train cart. There were a larger range of people on board which included large families, construction workers, and students.
After we transferred to the Market-Frankford line, however, I could see how the crowd might make students uncomfortable. There were several homeless people on board that tried to strike up conversations with the people around them. One man in front of me continually yelled at every passenger that carried a bottled drink, turned around in his seat and stared my group and I down, and muttered profanities under his breath. Being raised in New York definitely taught me to put my guard up and expect the worse when in these situations. Although the homeless people in New York aren’t typically as aggressive, I’m used to receiving attention from them.
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Breaking the Rules
Jessica Bernal
ESEM-Play in The City
Breaking the Rules
If I followed every rule to the dot growing up, then I wouldn’t have learned a thing in life. As mentioned before, instead of working on math in third grade, I watched movies and I didn’t turn out so bad, so they say.
If I base my experience of Spring Gardens in Philadelphia to what play should be according to Costikyan, “games are by their definition competitive in that they always have an end point- a winning or losing state” (Flanagan, 7) then no I didn’t “play critically” into the city. But playing critically is not about having a winning or losing state or following the rules, in my perspective, playing is about breaking the rules and as Flanagan states, “Critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” (pg.6)
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Critically Playing in the City
This trip into Philly was full of change. This helped me “critically play” because it was different from my normal routine. Mary Flanagan, in the introduction to her book Critical Play, defines play as “central to human and animal life; is generally a voluntary act; offers pleasure in its own right (and by its own rides); is mentally or physically challenging; and is separated from reality” (Flanagan 5). Some aspects of this trip that were different from my normal day include the food, the atmosphere, and the transportation.
My average day is spent in classes, at a desk studying, or eating the dining halls’ consistent but decent cuisine. The occasional escape from this normalcy is treasured. One very easy way to break this routine is through food. Although Bryn Mawr’s food is delicious, trying new flavors and textures helps interrupt the monotony of the school year. For dietary exploration, I turned to the city of Philadelphia.
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Mushroom Man
Perspective is everything. When you throw out your trash, you don’t see it as art or something to play with. Those glass bottles you’re about to throw out are probably going to go to the landfills, lost within other glass bottles or dirty paper towels. That broken bike you can’t trust anymore will also make the trip to the landfill, as will those outdated wall tiles that once decorated your home. Isaiah Zagar sees the glass bottles, broken bicycle, and wall tiles as art. He sees them as parts of his art. One man’s trash is another man’s artwork. The Magic Gardens in Philadelphia show us that our trash can be beautiful; it isn’t just stinky junk that we don’t want anymore. When you throw out your trash, you don’t think that it can be a part of a mosaic that people pay money to visit.
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play out of expectation
I thought play is an act that mainly brings me happiness and joy before; however, after this trip, I found playing is not always that enjoyable. On the other hand, sometimes, it can bring me both the excitement and uncomfortable feeling, both nervousness and surprise.
In Flanagan’s work, she regards playing as a media to express subversive views- to break the rules. In the trips before, I never intentionally try to feel this. In other words, I just see the subversion in the mosaics by Zagar- the unorthodox expression of art with broken trashes and frameless piece of work. However, I never find the subversion in my playing in the city in those trips. The trip to old city and Chestnut Street this time leaves me an unforgettable and mixed feelings and thoughts.
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To Subvert With Pomegranate (2)
Phoenix
MLord
Play in the City 028
Sunday, October 6, 2013
To Subvert With Pomegranate
As a player in the city, I “explore what is permissible and what pushes at that boundary between rules and expectations” (Flanagan 13). For a long time now, I have understood instinctively that art, to me, is a way of surprising people. The first person who put this sensation into words was Dorothy Allison in her essay, "This is Our World." Allison described art as a way to challenge and to cause people to think about the ideas that they prefer to shove aside and pretend don't exist. My reaction to this was an intense sense of "I'm not the only one." According to Mary Flanagan, not only am I not the only one, I come from a long line of artists who see art as their tool to shock and surprise—their instrument of Duchamp’s “spirit of revolt” (Flanagan 3, 10).
I take pictures of pineapples in ordinary places. The juxtaposition between the pineapple, a most peculiar looking object that has become normal, with a familiar location, reminds the viewer of the oddity a pineapple really is. A pineapple in bed, on a shelf next to books, answering the telephone, all have been ways I have played with a pineapple. Subversion, according to Flanagan, is the upending of a paradigm—but one must know what one is trying to upend. I was not sure, then, what I was trying to subvert or what I was trying to say, only that I wished for viewers to wake up to the real world if only for a minute.
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What Is Art?
Samantha Plate
Play In The City
10/06/2013
What Is Art?
In Mary Flanagan’s book Critical Play, she tries to define play through art. She associates play with art because they both “manifest critical thinking” (Flanagan 3). She believes artists use play in their work, often in subversive ways. While in Philadelphia this weekend I experienced a lot of art. This made me think of Flanagan and how art is connected to play. Last week I examined one of Flanagan’s definitions of play and how it fit with what I saw. This week I viewed my experience of Philadelphia through her view of art. Flanagan makes a few statements about art and its playful and subversive qualities to help define it. Flanagan first quotes Marcel Duchamp saying "in art there is no such thing as perfection" (Flanagan 3). She believes there is a "call for innovation" in the art world and subsequently in play. When it comes to defining what an artist is, she uses "’making’ for ‘making's sake’" (rather than for some arbitrary reason like money) as a qualification (Flanagan 4). Flanagan also discusses the subversive nature of art. It made me question if art has to be subversive to be playful or vice versa? Flanagan looks at Antonio Negri and determines that subversion is “a creative act rather than a destructive act” (Flanagan 11). Subversion is all about breaking rules and so naturally both play and art are conducive to subversion, but must they be subversive?
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Tag-A-Long
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Philadelphia, 1967: Darryl McCray begins painting his nickname, “Cornbread”, on the streets of North Philadelphia to get a girl’s attention.
Philadelphia, 1984: The Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network (PAGN) is established to combat vandalism.
Philadelphia, 2013: The battle over graffiti rages on.
Philadelphia’s First Friday is an art festival of sorts that Old City organizes on the first Friday of every month. Rain or shine, fine art galleries between Front and Third, and Market and Vine streets can be found with open doors welcoming world-weary Philadelphians into their wine-scented interiors.