September 25, 2015 - 16:46
In Edensor’s essay, he analyzes play in industrial ruins to have multiple functions. As Edensor explores the routes and manifestations of play, which he categorizes into destructive, hedonistic, artistic and adventurous versions, he makes the claim that play is a way for children to toy with and manipulate adult roles, going beyond simple imitation. Edensor also emphasizes that the environment of an industrial ruin is optimal to experiment with unadulterated freedom. In a web posting on Serendip Studio, under the username isabell.the.polyglot, a contributor recalls a memory of play in which she is freed from the supervision of her mother, and takes the opportunity to try something new that she would not have attempted had her mother been watching. Two qualities of Isabell’s experience, its placement in an environment of irregularity and unpredictability and the fact that it happened without a parent watching, make her recollection and Edensor’s similar. The commonalities between the two reveal the shared benefits, where the “the particular material and unregulated qualities of industrial dereliction [allow] a range of playful activities,” and the shared dangers, where there may be a true threat to safety because of a failure to protect and prevent. (Edensor)
Isabell references an unsurveillanced encounter with a platform that caused her physical pain in the end. Though the elevated platform does not constitute an industrial ruin such as the ones Edensor promotes throughout his essay, the walkway was used by Isabell in a way Edensor would recognize: one that defies “usual conventions about the inviolability of physical matter as property,” characterized by an intentional absence of regard for an object and its traditional, functional meaning. The elevated platform occupies a point in space where people do not typically walk on top of it, but instead of respecting its normal function, Isabell climbed on top of it, realizing that once out of sight of her mother, she “had a lot more freedom to explore the world around [her].” (Serendip)
Play under surveillance is a way for children to adopt certain roles in a safe environment. Under the watchful eye of a parent, children might feel pressured to exercise caution while playing, to be wary not only of physical harm but emotional harm, too. They may refrain from climbing up unstable structures, or they may refrain from adopting the role of a certain character for fear of offending their parents. Protecting children from potential harm has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage of excessive supervision is that it sends the message to kids that strangeness is something they can flirt with or try on, something they can polish and tease, but never realize. In Isabell’s case, the “strangeness” manifested itself in an unstable surface that caused her physical injury, something her mother tried to avoid, but also something that offered Isabell a lesson in awareness.
Isabell’s parents “let [her] explore as long as [she] didn’t endanger [herself],” which is a policy they enacted in order to keep her safe. (Serendip) Parents might have a hard time knowing how much supervision is appropriate, since it is easy to smother or neglect a child, even in their best interests. In Isabell’s case, she “wanted to see how long [she] could go before [her] mom found out and pulled [her] down,” so she “started to run and dance along it, experimenting with all the different ways of walking that [she] knew.” (Serendip). It was fun and new, until she caught a loose tile, and fell down.
Isabell’s recollection of play has some of the same qualities of the play that occurs in an industrial ruin, even though it did not occur in one. The ruins are described as being “full of multiple tactilities, smells, sounds, and sights.” (Edensor) The place that Isabell was playing in could not truly be considered a ruin, but it was described as having loose tiles, indicating a state of disrepair (to a lesser extent than that of a ruin). The unpredictability of the landscape increases the interaction that the player has with their surroundings. The uneven surface of her experience shaped her experience, which she remembers as being “the moment that [she] realized that not everything was possible, and that sometimes having caution was a good thing.” The acknowledgement and appreciation of caution in the context of Isabell’s experience made her unlikely to try something like that again in the future, a sharp lesson that resulted from this strange environment. Isabell’s fall unfortunately left her with a scar that would remind her to take a little more caution in the future when playing in new spaces.
Without her mother’s watchful gaze and in an untested landscape, Isabell was able to experience, if only momentarily, the same freedom and unfamiliarity of playing in an industrial ruin. She was able to push the boundaries of what was acceptably safe to run and dance on, taking on the mature role of someone who has the responsibility of making their own decisions. The surroundings and conditions of this memory of play made it experientially parallel to that of Edensor’s description of playing in ruins.
Citations
Web Source: “Playing on the Wild Side” /oneworld/changing-our-story-2015/playing-wild-side
Edensor, Tim, Bethan Evans, Julian Holloway, Steve Millington and Jon Binnie. "Playing in Industrial Ruins: Interrogating Teleological Understandings of Play in Spaces of Material Alterity and Low Surveillance." Urban Wildscapes. Ed. Anna Jorgensen and Richard Keenan. New York: Routledge, 2011. 65-79.