opportunities for outdoor play

8/12/2019 Opportunities for Outdoor Play

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Opportunities for Outdoor Play? Playgrounds –New Spaces of Liberty (The Question of Form)Kunsthof, Zurich, 2013A project curated by Dimitrina Sevova in cooperation with Prof. Elke Bippus, FranziskaKoch and the department Vertiefung Bildende Kunst of the Zurich University of the Arts



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Opportunities for Outdoor Play? Playgrounds – New Spaces of Liberty (The Question of Form)


Project Overview

“Art’s situation today might actuallyconstitute one speci c form of a muchmore general relationship that existsbetween the autonomy of the spaces re-served for art and its apparent contrary:art’s involvement in constituting formsof common life.” (Rancière) 1

A transdisciplinary collective will beformed to work on speci c archive and ex -perimental research regarding the history

of playgrounds, and of spaces temporar-ily used for alternative leisure activities inthe city of Zurich, and contextualize theresults between the discursive elds ofhistory, economics, sociology, aesthetics,architecture, design and art. The researchwill look at playground structures, equip-ment and toys from a critical historicalperspective into the present day, in orderto apply this knowledge in re-constructinga playground structure, creating an arenaoriented to creative action and art produc-tion in a complex space where theoreticalre ection and performative practices in -volve various agents and actors. Drawingon arguments from the realm of ecology,recycling, the commons, and radical lei-sure, the arena is to function as an open-eld experiment for the aesthetic produc -

tion of an art object with a dysfunctionalstructure, open to participation by thebroad audience and the inhabitants of thecity.

1 Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Discon- tents , trans. Steven Corcoran, Cambridge, Polity

Press, 2009, p. 26.

The project will proceed in phases:1) Form the research group2) Build up the dysfunctional

playground3) Theoretical symposium,

performances, screenings andactions, speeches

4) Publication re ecting the differentstages of the project, including thedocumentation, giving space forexpanded theoretical and practicalre ections and artistic commentaries,notes and interventions.

The project will start with screenings,public readings, performances, and anart guided walk through some of the play-ground places in the city of Zurich. It willend with a discussion, DJ party and bar-becue, drawing on the party as a dispositif .



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ContentsAction and Play – coming from work in art, where art labor meets the productive labor of thespectator 5Work and Play – Leisure as the Freedom of the Common 6Play, Leisure and Education 7Practical Knowledge as an Aesthetic Form of Daily Life 7

Play Is Productive 8Starting from Play 9Inside-Outside the White Cube – the shades of space – on the autonomy of space betweeninstitution and public as a common ground for play 11Is there anything left outside the White Cube? – valorization and shortage of physicalspace, private and public 12

The End of the Outside – a supervised public cube, new enclosures – indirect and non-strategic bio-control 13

The Shades of Space as a Device for Producing an Autonomous Space 14Kunsthof as a ‘vacant lot’ – organizing new aesthetic forms of common life 14Re-activating the space 15A Place Without a Roof: between any urban constructions – public or private – is air (themain common) 15Dimensions of Collective Play with Aesthetic Objects and Objects of Knowledge 16

On Method: Coming from Research – dia-grammatical gure (concrete gure – the gureof truth) 16After Image – Playground – a dia-grammatical gure of a politics of dysfunctionality 17Interdependency between Research and Practice – defamiliarizing the automation of per-ceptions 17

The Politics of Display 18Collective Labor Is Conceivable in Art 19A Middle Ground – the object of art in-between the political and the aesthetic 19The Love of Art as an aesthetic and political project 20Play Is Love – Play Creates Difference 20With Bourdieu’s The Love of Art – in search of a new concept of love 21

The Love of Art not as cultural capital but as commons 21Love in Play 23

A Critical Stance Towards the Game – to draw a distinction means to be in the game 24



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The project Opportunities for Outdoor Play?Playgrounds – New Spaces of Liberty (TheQuestion of Form) is looking for a new ma-terialism, because the current nancial

crisis and the radical dematerialization,digitalization and nancialization of hu -man relations calls for it. This materialismis not a question of realism or of repre-sentation, but of reality and truth, of anontology of the work of art, an aestheticscience. This is why the project is informedby epistemological reality and the empiri-cal gathering of data, combined with ahistorical analysis and intellectual effort tore-translate and re-compose this data inorder to construct an art object, a formaldysfunctional playground structure whoseform will perform through its dysfunction-ality a given meaning, and realize a tempo-rary autonomous space in-between, as amiddle ground where freedom of play cantake place.

It takes as its starting points Bourdieu’sconcept of a science of the work of art,in which he reactivates the notion ofthe agent, which in its long history hasrather been discriminated in favor of thestructure. Bourdieu argues, drawing onMarx’s Theses on Feuerbach , that it isessential “to take back from idealism […]the ‘active aspect’ of practical knowledge

which the materialist tradition had left toit,” and thus to “break with the canonicalopposition between theory and practice,so profoundly inscribed in the division oflabor.” In his approach he draws on “apractical knowledge or a knowledgeablepractice” 2 as he takes practice as the rstobject of his research.

The method of the project indeed takesits inspiration from Bourdieu, who issimultaneously sociological and aestheticaland whose method of work can be appliedto art practice, to ecological analysis,and a transdisciplinary research into thesocial and political microclimate and thehistory of the playground, its environmentand spaces for outdoor play in the city ofZurich. In this analysis the social dynamicof the neighborhood of Kunsthof willnd itself embedded in macro aspects of

globalization with its re-territorializationand expansion in the territory of the

2 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesisand Structure of the Literary Field , trans. Su-san Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 1996,

p. 179.

global creative city, re ecting on thegeneralized economic and ecological crisisand on the unstable situation in whichnotions of labor and free time change

under the pressure of exibilization andprecarization, with the destruction ofthe working day and free time and thedemise of the living wage, leading to theearthquake of the re-composition of allspheres of life.

The project draws not only on scienti cmethod, but as well on the pleasureprinciple embodied in the real and itsrealizations, and on second-order aestheticsensualism to go beyond bipolar principlesin the act of creation in art, such asactive and passive, and production andconsumption.

The project is interested not in universalcriteria legitimizing aesthetic judgment,but in provoking aesthetic experiencethrough creative joy and practicalknowledge. How can it be experiencedcombined with theoretical knowledge,intertwining theory and practice todeal with the problem of distance,taking into critical consideration thehistorical conditions of appearance of thedetachment and disinterestedness of highculture aesthetics?

All objects on display will be touchable,

demand and offer close bodily relationswith this ‘concrete’ object derived fromthe reality of the abstraction of social life,mobilizing “a form of both political andaesthetical sensualism […] capable ofcritically re-working those abstractions.”(Virno) 3

3 Paolo Virno on second-order observation andself-re exivity: “I am convinced that these sec -ond-order sensations, which refer back to intel-lectual knowledge, can be seen as the privilegedmaterials of political and aesthetical experience.Why? Because today the fundamental problemis not to oppose the abstraction of social lifein the name of a supposedly ‘concrete’, but toderive a totally new ‘concrete’ precisely from thereality of abstraction. I refer to Marx, who talkedof ‘real abstractions’ (like money, law, State in-stitutions), and Marx talked also of the generalintellect, that is the techno-scienti c knowledgeas the cornerstone of social production. Thetask is to develop a form of both political andaesthetical sensualism that takes the ‘real ab-stractions’ as its starting point, a sensualismcapable of critically re-working those abstrac-tions.” Paolo Virno, “Three Remarks Regardingthe Multitude’s Subjectivity and Its Aesthetic

Component,” in Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle



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Action and Play – coming fromwork in art, where art labormeets the productive labor ofthe spectator

The project concerns how emancipatoryart practices need to take account not onlyof the act of creation of art and its dissemi-nation, but also of the act of perceivingthe work of art, as the mode of viewing orreading the work is in itself productive andcreative.

The project seeks to contribute to thedistribution of the sensual and cognitive,of the textual and visual in an objectivesocial terrain in which aesthetic relationsare to be shared equally between art laborand the labor of its public as a collectiveaction of the productive aesthetic laborpower, creating new alliances, a new socialorganization and form of common, newaesthetic perspectives.

Let us not forget that the work of arttruly works only when it is infused bythe vital energy of its spectators andbecomes living form. The real act ofreading and viewing, both singular andbeing-in-common, is an inherent part ofthe art production process. The projectintends to contribute to discussions of

emancipatory politics of the public, andlook at how art must mediate its objectto articulate a creative audience or anaudience of creators, an audience oflovers characterized by an inexpressiblesingularity and liberty when they meet theobject of art in real time in the space, sinceplay and love are spatial practices. Letus argue here with Deleuze and Guattarithat subjectivity produces reality as arealization of these connected realities.

The division of labor which remainsthe main characteristic of the eld of art,the artist, the curator, the theoretician,the critic and the public, can be overcomethrough the expression of labor as desire.According to Michael Hardt and AntonioNegri labor remains “beyond measure” dueto “the vitality of the productive context,the expression of labor as desire, and itscapacities to constitute the biopolitical

Graw (eds.), Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects,and the New Spirit of Capitalism , Sternberg

Press, 2008, p. 41.



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fabric of Empire from below.” 4 The publiccan be seen as labor of desire, which takesan active part in the eld of art. This laborof desire operates between work and play,

between work and love. The importance of the labor of desire,

the affective labor of a creative andproductive public can be better graspedif we bear in mind the way Foucaultin The Birth of Biopolitics articulateshow in neoliberal society labor power istransformed into subjectivity. “Marx makeslabor the linchpin […] of his analysis. […]What is it that he shows the worker sells?Not his labor, but his labor power. He sellshis labor power for a certain time againsta wage established on the basis of a givensituation of the market correspondingto the balance between the supply anddemand of labor power.” 5 Neoliberalismchanges this. On the one hand this is dueto the installing in social production andreproduction of the principle of strategicrationality previously applied only towork, on the other to the decline of thewage system, the exibilization of workingprocesses in which “the worker is notpresent in the economic analysis as anobject – the object of supply and demandin the form of labor power – but as anactive economic subject.” 6

Therefore labor is no longer anabstraction, but becomes a biologicalentity, measured and de ned, which sellsits power on the market one by one, as anentrepreneur of itself, performing itself asa subjectivity rather than offering its laborpower.

Work and Play – Leisure as theFreedom of the Common

The project Opportunities for Outdoor Play?Playgrounds – New Spaces of Liberty (TheQuestion of Form) pursues to confront itspublic with the everyday aesthetic experi-ence of ‘leisure’ and ‘play,’ not in the senseof the feast or the way Bakhtin theorizesthe carnival, where a temporary situationis created arti cially to celebrate inventive

4 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire ,Harvard University Press, 2000, p. 357.

5 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lec- tures at the Collège de France 1978-1979 , trans.Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008,p. 221.

6 Ibid. , p. 223.

freedom as a liberation from establishedpower structures, 7 where everything canbe turned on its head so that the socialcontract is signed anew and the existing

dominant power is con rmed. Rather, itaims to empower the ordinary liberal artsand the aesthetics of daily life, the smallpractical actions in their everyday repeti-tion, which often have no end but them-selves.

In this, it takes under considerationPlato’s understanding of ‘leisure’ as thefreedom of the common. This should notbe mistaken with a theory of the leisureclass. It is not a matter of privilege. Thisleisure consists of small portions ofeveryday freedom, dreams and affects,everyday conversations and socialrelations, language in the vernacularresponsible for the formation of the socialbond, “the everyday bits and pieces offreedom nearly everyone has” 8 which arethe new frontier of conquest of the post-Fordist economy and techno-cognitivenancial capitalism, to be commercializedand turned into new areas of pro tabilitywhere they are alienated from their ownends.

If leisure time in Fordism, based onthe construction of the living wage andnormalized working time, was already

possessed by the spectacle of the culturalindustry or the industry of tourism,and mediated by the technologies of thespectacle aimed at controlling humanabilities to communicate outside theeconomic production process, now we arefaced with an accelerated extension of thisregime into all spheres of life that craves toco-opt every bit of free time and freeplay.

7 “[There are] no ‘rituals of transgression.’ The very expression makes no sense, especiallywhen applied to the festival. The latter hasproved very problematic for our revolutionaries:is the festival a transgression or regenerationof the Law? An absurd question, for rituals, in-cluding the ritual liturgy of the festival, belongto neither the domain of the Law, nor its trans-gression, but to that of the Rule.” Jean Baudril-lard, Seduction , St. Martin’s Press, 1990 (Frenchoriginal 1979), p. 138.

8 Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt, “Plato on Lei-sure, Play, And Learning,” in Leisure Sciences ,<http://www.uiowa.edu/~lsa/bkh/200/plato-

article.htm> (accessed 2013-03-26).



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Play, Leisure and Education The conception of freedom and the cre-ation of an autonomous space outside of-cial power structures where this freedom

can thrive is not new. It is of great impor-tance to Plato’s understanding of educa-tion and learning. For him, “the properplace to search for Truth was in half-civilplaces, where humans were not totally incharge.” 9 He considers most appropriateto this the meadows somewhat outside thetown, where he can create a eld in whichknowledge can be sought in a playful andsharing way, and nd common groundoutside the reach of the state, business ordistracting activities such as preparing forthe Olympic games.

In this eld, knowledge can bemeasured in and for itself, and not by themeasuring system of rivalry of the societyof athletes and merchants. Derrida, inhis essay “Structure, Sign and Play in theDiscourse of the Human Sciences,” takesa critical stance towards structuralismand Claude Lévi-Strauss with his nostalgicidea of freeplay before the advent of theLaw and God, and despite the generalpost-structuralist desire to nd a way ofdeparting from Plato, he is not so far fromhim when he says that freeplay can startonly after the end of the game, which isnot only after the death of God but alsoafter the demise of the Law. In humanscience, a spatial and temporal practicewhere there is no longer one center orsource, the eld can be created frommany centers, many sources, through itsown discursivity in the freeplay of manysigni ers that creates difference in thestructures. 10

The project’s approach is not to pit‘leisure’ against ‘work.’ Leisure and playare as productive for the social tissue aswork and labor. We are in a constant mode

of production, which is why the projectlooks rather at ‘play’ as opposed to the‘game,’ play as an orienting and organizingprinciple, an environmental and spatialpractice, and at freedom of play as amicropolitical practice related to everydaylife and aesthetic production.

9 Hunnicutt, op. cit.10 Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign and Playin the Discourse of the Human Sciences” in id. ,Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, 1966,

pp. 278-95.

Since ancient times play has shownemancipatory potential. This brings usto some questions raised by Plato in thecontext of leisure and its eld: “What does

it mean to do something freely?” – “Wheredoes freedom lead to, ultimately?” Turningthem around to the contemporary context,the project asks whether there is still apossibility to do something freely, andwhere we end up if there is no space leftin which something can be done freely,something that leaves the premises ofdisciplinary and regulatory power, thecommands of consumption and thebiopolitical embedding of our entire livesas a stake in the game.

Plato in his Dialogs makes constantreferences to ‘play ‘and ‘leisure.’ He seeswriting as a ‘leisure behavior,’ because it isan activity and labor providing a practicalopportunity or freedom to do somethingunrelated to state duties or economicendless ends. In Plato’s understandingof the higher form of freedom leisure is“activity, not passiveness; a mind andbody in action, not frozen contemplation.”

The interplay between leisure and playin his writings is central to his ideasabout education. ‘Play’ is not the equal of‘leisure,’ but the two are interlinked in theeld of knowledge.

In Plato’s understanding education is alifelong communication and social processof scholé , the Greek word for leisurewhich is the origin of the modern wordsfor ‘school,’ ‘scholar,’ an etymologicaltie that is endangered by the split intocommercialized leisure provided byan industry of entertainment, and thedisciplining role of the modern schoolsystem. The contemporary notion oflifelong learning is turned into a pro tableterritory of knowledge economy andcognitive capitalism, in which technologiesimpose the continuous acquisition of newskills at an ever faster pace in all spheresof life.

Practical Knowledge as an AestheticForm of Daily Life

The quest for linking practical and theo-retical knowledge is not new. The dif-ference is that today, this link has beencommercialized, and is no longer related tocreating social forms but is rather used asfuel for commercial and market processes.

The project to link practical and theoreti-

cal knowledge was a cornerstone of the



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Enlightenment, along with the effort toovercome the bipolar distinction betweennature and culture. Different scientistsand writers, following ethical and aesthetic

patterns discovered the role of the humanagent as an active force engaging with so-cial structures and the historical process.

Voltaire re ects on this in Candide: or,Optimism , where the main protagonistmust learn the lessons of life in orderto overcome the shortcomings of hisscholarly education and understand lifeas an ethical form, and exclaims at last:“Let us cultivate our garden.” 11 Whichmay be translated as: “Let us cultivate oureld” as human agents who must act and

struggle in our life, making choices andtaking responsibility for our actions.

Schiller on his part investigates theaesthetics of life, the drives that giverise to aesthetic objects and the art oflife, the self and its determination andenvironment, and its political, social andhistorical being and becoming, whichcomposes social reality in heterogeneoussocial assemblages. For him, aestheticeducation is essential to the realization ofhuman potential. In one of his letters Onthe Aesthetic Education of Man he assertsthat “man only plays when he is in thefullest sense of the word a human being,

and he is only fully a human being whenhe plays.” 12

Writing a century later, Flaubertadds to these concerns the dimension ofaffects. For him writing is the productionof material objects, a material as well asspatial practice. He places his subjects,constructed as formalized prototypesof social strata based on collected data,on the real map of Paris. In SentimentalEducation , 13 Frederick learns to live,acquires the power to act in the eld ofaffects and the eld of the economy, inthe eld of the political and the social.What animates his actions in these eldsis the aesthetics of life – the love of life,that same love that drives Flaubert himselfto write, a creative and productive lovewith its recomposing power continuouslyproducing heterogeneous social relations

11 Voltaire, Candide: or, Optimism , Chapter 30(Conclusion), 1759.

12 J. C. Friedrich von Schiller, On the AestheticEducation of Man , Letter XV, Paragraph 9, 1795.

13 Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education ,

Dover, 2006 (French original 1869).

and differences within the social tissueand his writing as an aesthetic practice.

For Bourdieu, Flaubert’s writing isa space in which art and science share

common epistemic realities, from whichthe autonomous elds of both emerge.Flaubert in his writing follows not only thehistorical conditions. It is an ontologicalappearance in the eld of knowledge andthe eld of aesthetics. 14

Play Is ProductiveIf Marx described the commodi cation ofspace, we are now faced in addition with acommodi cation of time. The project there -fore takes under critical consideration andexperiments with the notion of temporality

with its inherent ambiguity, emphasizingthrough the temporality of the exhibitionitself and exhibition making, the temporalrealization in the space of an aesthetic ob-

ject and the social relations involved.While Marx recognized that the

worker’s production can be described asconsumption, speaking as productiveconsumption of the process by which“while producing he consumes by hislabour the means of production, andconverts them into products with a highervalue than that of the capital advanced,” 15

Jon Beasley-Murray argues that “whatMarx did not recognize […] was thatwhat he called the worker’s ‘individualconsumption,’ outside the labor process,should also be seen as productive.” 16

In the post-Fordist economy theautomation of labor processes and re-composition of labor leads to exiting thefactory model. A new technological andeconomic model imposes exibilized andprecarized labor and blurs the boundariesbetween work-time and leisure-time. Thesystem of the living wage dissolves, even iftime remains the main factor in measuring

productivity.

14 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesisand Structure of the Literary Field , trans. SusanEmanuel, Stanford University Press, 1996.

15 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of PoliticalEconomy , Vol. 1, Ch. 23 (Simple Reproduction)<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch23.htm> (accessed 2013-03-28).

16 John Beasley-Murray, “Value and Capitalin Bourdieu and Marx,” in Nicholas Brown andImre Szeman (eds.), Pierre Bourdieu: Fieldwork

in Culture , Rowman & Little eld, 2000, p. 112.



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Play creates temporalities, which tend tobe regulated by the game in all spheres oflife. Indeed it would be dif cult to imaginea system or regime in history that has not

attempted to regulate, tame, put under itscontrol the vitality of freeplay of the socialeld of mediation, enclosing it in rules

in an effort to put it to work for its ownpurposes.

The play of the formless forms ofcontingence, which operates in-betweenconscious and unconscious as meta-structure and meta-grammar, and fromwhich the social tissue is woven, cultivatedand shaped are exploited to install rightthere invisible power relations (disguisedas natural) and unspoken rules whichdo not directly belong to the system ofthe law, various institutions to regulateit, such as patriarchy, the church, orthe family that complement the systemof the law. Cognitive capitalism seeks toappropriate affects precisely where theyare formed, at the contingences, and takecontrol of knowledge at a meta-level bymodulating the meta-grammar throughwhich science and knowledge constitutethemselves.

The eld of mediation is perceived asa playground for precarious and affectivelabor where play and free time are put

to work as never before. This becomespossible, according to Paolo Virno,“partly because human labour nowadaysis situated outside the machinery,accomplishing regulative, controlling, andco-ordinating tasks. But above all becausethe ‘raw material’ of the labour processis knowledge, information, culture, andsocial relations.” 17 This process must notbe mistaken with ‘creative destruction’ andthe crisis state through which capitalismat intervals attempts to escape blockedaccumulation in successive molts.

An increasingly limited space is left tofreeplay and its playgrounds to inventand cultivate new social forms andautonomous zones in which circulationcan be organized in different ways fromthose of the market economy. “To treatthe rules as ends (or as laws or truths) is

17 Paolo Virno, “Three Remarks Regarding theMultitude’s Subjectivity and Its Aesthetic Com-ponent,” in Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw(eds.), Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects, andthe New Spirit of Capitalism , Sternberg Press,

2008, p. 35.

to destroy both the game and its stakes,”notes Baudrillard. 18

Freeplay is involved in socialproductivity, including affect and

communication, all that is productiveand relates to exuberance, proliferation,multiplicity in the social productionas opposed to scarcity, austerityand limitations. The process of thereproduction of labor becomes all themore complicated, as capitalism becomesincreasingly dependent on the social andcommunication skills and vitality of livinglabor that can thrive only in freeplay, whileat the same time it strives to subject themto the rules of its biopolitical and marketeconomy games.

Starting from Play The project does not intend to provide aclosed theory or a xed notion of play, butrather relies on its inherent ambiguity andambivalence, and draws on its rhizomatichistory, on those moments and movementsof the theory and practice of play that re-peat themselves while creating differencefrom which proliferate the knowledge, ex-perience and aesthetics of play, and intro-ducing the potentiality of change.

The richness of theories in whichplay resonates shows that play is not aparticular, and cannot be restricted to asystem. Let us not forget that the originalmeaning of Spiel (the German word for

play ) is dance , as Gadamer points out.Play takes part in the aesthetic domain ofthe appearance of form and its evolution,where form performs its function andmeaning, and play constitutes thedynamic and struggles of the inherentdevices of form. In Gadamer’s conceptionplay “what characterizes this movementback and forth is that neither pole of themovement represents the goal in which it

would come to rest.” 19

Play involves ephemeral and arbitraryrather than consistent and purposefulrules. Play excludes totalization, saysDerrida, who understands it as a tensioninherent in every structure arti cial ornatural, as a dynamic principle. Playenables deconstruction, the freeplay

18 Jean Baudrillard, op. cit. , p. 140.

19 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Relevance ofthe Beautiful,” in id. , The Relevance of the Beau- tiful and Other Essays , ed. Robert Bernasconi,

Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 23.



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between signi ers that liberates meaningfrom the trap of the language of dominantpower structures and multiplies meanings,unleashing rhythm and returning the

vital breath to language, breaking withWittgenstein’s language games. From thedepths of this play then emerges the gureof the ‘uncanny’ other, the barbarian,the uncivilized. Play is a manifestation ofthe love to the stranger, of solidarity inthe social bond, the romantic dream fora better society. The historical notion ofplay is inscribed in freedom. Or: freedom isconstituted by play.

“[The term of play-drive] is fully justi ed by linguistic usage, which iswont to designate as ‘play’ everythingthat is neither subjectively nor objectivelycontingent, and yet imposes no kind ofconstraint either from within or fromwithout.” 20 Play is in-between, in a ‘middlecondition’ in which Schiller locates a‘third state’ (the ‘aesthetic state’) a ‘thirdcharacter.’ The ‘third thing’ as a non-dialectical form is always of twofoldnature, like the Deleuzian Baroquegrotesque forms which are in constant owas they metamorphose into one another.Play is the double-faced emanation of theexultation of bodies dancing in unison,which breathes a ‘free spirit’ celebrated by

Nietzsche in Gay Science as “an exuberantdancing song in which […] one dancesright over morality.” 21

Play as a formless forming principlegiving form to the function of societyand its aesthetical forms can be readthrough negativity – an antithesiswithout synthesis –, excess, exuberance,transgressivity, grotesque, Derrideandeconstruction in différance , theBaudrillardian play of seduction inappearances and disappearances where“every ethics must resolve itself intoan aesthetics” which “is not divine andtranscendent, but ironic and diabolical,” 22 Nietzschean gaya scienza, Bakhtiniangrotesque forms of the carnivalesque,

20 Friedrich Schiller, “Letters on the AestheticEducation of Man,” Letter XV, in Walter Hin-derer and Daniel O. Dahlstrom (eds.), Essays:Friedrich Schiller (The German Library No. 17),Continuum, 1993, p. 129.

21 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo , com-mentary on The Gay Science , trans. WalterKaufmann, in id. , On the Genealogy of Morals &Ecce Homo , Vintage Books, 1989 (1967), p. 294.

22 Jean Baudrillard, op. cit. , p. 115.

Rabelaisian outrageous language wherethe collision between the tectonic platesof civilizations engenders the newlanguages, the liberating public speech

act on the medieval town square. In allthese, language is liberated through theplay of inverted grammar. Play is alsoproductive in Bataille’s theorizing of theeconomics of expenditure and the power ofecstasy as a surplus energy to be burnedin painful pleasure and sinful play, whichhe bases on the French structuralistsand anthropologists Marcel Mauss andClaude Lévi-Strauss’s research into the gifteconomy of primitive societies before theadvent of the market. Roger Caillois, in hiscritical reading of Johan Huizinga’s HomoLudens , 23 carefully distinguishes betweenfreeplay and the rules of the game, 24 something that had escaped Huizinga’sattention, and between the ecstasy of thedancing rhythm and its restoration in theintoxication by the manipulated ecstaticcrisis for the purpose of repression andintimidation where “the aesthetic voyageis no longer a shamanistic odyssey,” andemphasizes the role of rituals and gamesas instruments of the control of bodies.

For Gadamer, play is not a matter ofdisengaged, disinterested subjectivity,in contrast to Kant’s understanding of

it. Play is the key to understanding “thetruth of art.” While the Situationistswith their militant art tactics taken frompotlatch against bourgeois culture and itshabitus seek liberate “truth in play.” Playremains one of the underlying problems inphilosophy and aesthetic theory and artand life.

“Schiller’s paradigmatic play chiasm 25 is [that] the form drive achieves itsful llment only through the sense drive,the sense drive through the form drive;[…] the chiasm that conjoins the form

23 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study ofthe Play-Element in Culture , Routledge, 1949.

24 Roger Caillois, Man and the Sacred , trans.Meyer Barash, Free Press of Glencoe, 1960.Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games , trans.Meyer Barash, Free Press of Glencoe, 1961.

25 “Repetition of ideas in inverted order. Inits classical application chiasmus [is] used forstructures that do not repeat the same wordsand phrases […], but instead create a mirroredeffect upon the ideas and thoughts in a portionor passage.” Gregory T. Howard, Dictionary ofRhetorical Terms , entry on Chiasmus, Xlibris

Corporation, 2010, p. 64.



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lanes and places, old and new houses,some of which have annexes from dif-ferent times; and all this is surroundedby new suburbs where streets are sym-

metric and houses are uniform. It seemssuitable to invert Wittgenstein’s com-parison: rather it is the contemporarymetropolis that is built on the modelof language. The metropolis appearsas a labyrinth of expressions, meta-phors, proper names, and propositions,of tenses and moods of the verb; andsaying this is no simple analogy. Themetropolis actually is a linguistic forma-tion, an environment that is above allconstituted by objectivized discourse, bypreconstructed code, and by material-ized grammar. To nd one’s bearings ina metropolis is gaining linguistic experi-ence. (Virno) 30

If we hope that by exhibiting art outdoorswe can directly avoid the trap of the spa-tio-temporal relations of exhibition spaceswhich produce the speci c temporality ofthe simulacra and its illusio , escape theapparatus of walls and sidestep metaphorsof penetration, integration and absorptionand be able to reach the reality of dailylife, liberate art practices and their objects,and create action and events instead, wehad better take into consideration Law-rence Weiner’s sober statement regardingthe privileged position of the White Cube:

“Living outside the White Cube as youcall it is a very romantic but very sillyconcept. Anything with a roof on it is aWhite Cube & in order to exist it has tohave outside walls. I guess my responseis that there is no imagination requiredto accept the lack of hierarchy of an in-side or outside space.” 31

To speak today of an opposition betweenthe White Cube and public space is be-

30 Paolo Virno, “Three Remarks Regarding theMultitude’s Subjectivity and Its Aesthetic Com-ponent,” in Daniel Birnbaum and Isabelle Graw(eds.), Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects, andthe New Spirit of Capitalism , Sternberg Press,2008, pp. 32-33.

31 Lawrence Weiner, in “About Art in PublicSpace: 6 Questions to 6 Artists,” in WernerFenz, Evelyn Kraus, Birgit Kulterer (eds.), Kunstim Öffentlichen Raum Steiermark / Art in Pub- lic Space Styria , SpringerWienNewYork, 2011,p. 41. Responding to the question: “Could youimagine living without the White Cube and

working exclusively in public space?”

coming increasingly problematic as theboundary between public and privatespace is becoming thinner. On the con-trary, one could say that the White Cube

is becoming a paradigm for public space.It is not entirely clear which of the twois disappearing in the endless economicrestructuring and de-composition and re-composition of the social formation: pri-vate or public space?

In reality the thwarted opportunitiesof developing autonomy, heterogeneityand alternative forms of life are the moststriking effect of this process in whichinstitutional apparatuses penetrate allspheres of material life, producing “theontological fabric in which all the relationsof power are woven together – politicaland economic relations as well as socialand personal relations.” 32 In fact thereis no longer such a contrast betweeninstitutional space and outdoor space, asboth appear as normative spaces, strictlyregulated as “sovereignty transforms intogovernmentality” 33 toward the rationalnormalization of social life, where radicalforms of subjectivities can no longer bepracticed due to “the general equalizationor smoothing of social space” 34 and thepuri cation and cleaning going hand inhand with a discourse of protection and

safety, and the pressure to adjust andintegrate.

Is there anything left outside theWhite Cube? – valorization andshortage of physical space, privateand publicIt is not only of ce space that takes overthe place of the factory in the process ofde-industrialization in the global city, butalso the concept of the loft intervenes inthe understanding of private space as a

symbol of the modern way of life and newcomfort, the idea of a bright and whitehome which underpins the efforts of reno-vating and adapting to new standards en-tire neighborhoods in a process known asgentri cation.

The effect of this urban regeneration isto raise the cost of real estate, leading toan arti cial valorization of entire parts of


33 Ibid. , p. 339.

34 Ibid. , p. 336.



14


grasp and recognize and distinguishbiological bodies and subjects. Thecommands are no longer expressed in thedisciplinary modalities that characterized

modernity but rather in a concentrationof indirect and non-strategic bio-controlchanneled through the administrationof social singularities, through exibleadministrative procedures based ondistinction and singularization that treateach element of social reality one by oneas mathematical units. This contrastswith the earlier creation of a mass andthe regulation of the participation in theeconomic game.

And yet, as Foucault emphasizes,social inequalities have not disappeared.

The subject organized by the system ofcommands in exible forms of labor issubjected to a perpetual distinction asa productive element. Through thesedistinctions new forms of labor divisionand stigmatization appear, marking theeconomization of the entire social eld.

The “tendency [towards ‘fortressarchitecture’] in urban planning andarchitecture has established in concrete,physical terms what we called earlierthe end of the outside, or rather thedecline of public space that had allowedfor open and unprogrammed social

interaction.”38

The urban public space isthus turned into a supervised public cubein which the distant and hedonistic gazeautomatically reprehends and createssocial contradictions while “architectureappears as a backdrop to the performanceof citizenship and gender” (and class,race). 39

The Shades of Space as a Device forProducing an Autonomous SpaceStarting out from the speci city and condi -tions of the place itself, Opportunities forOutdoor Play? Playgrounds – New Spacesof Liberty (The Question of Form) will takeinto consideration, much like architects doin planning a new building, the speci cityof the terrain, the surrounding environ-ment and systems of supply. The aim ofthe project is not to build a new building,


39 Pablo Bronstein, Katrin Mayer, “Re-ReadingSpace,” in Displayer 03 , July 2009 <http://adkp.ruhe.ru/en/displayer/displayer-03> (ac-

cessed 2013-03-21).

but to create a temporary space within theexisting architecture of Kunsthof, to con-struct a playground structure, a platformfor diverse parallel activities within the

largely imposed and determined existingspatial parameters in which the projectwill unfold. This will involve a re-readingand translation of the space itself, exhibit-ing or displaying texture, text written withobjects and images, which creates a eldof action and movement for the viewers.

The project will re ect on its locationand the socio-economic and cultural mapof the city, taking into consideration itshistorical and economic context in orderto approach the discursive aspect of itstopic and the forming principles of creatinga temporary space, with an emphasis onthe crises of “social temporality” on thebackground of the present spatial collapseand privatization of the city’s geography.

Kunsthof as a ‘vacant lot’ – organizingnew aesthetic forms of common lifeKunsthof as a remaining “vacant lot” be-tween buildings of the city, which is nei-ther a fully public nor a fully private place,neither fully exterior nor fully interior, asa non-commercial space of art that hasremained in the midst of the commercial-

ization of public space, contains elementsboth of everyday life and of the arti ciallygenerated and de ned environment of theWhite Cube as a legitimizing agent of theautonomy of this space within its institu-tional context, which in fact secures it thestatus of a non-commercial space. Thiscondition makes it dif cult to categorize, aspace with its own autonomy which allowsus to consider how to insert in the gap in-between art practices constituting forms ofcommon life, artistic forms capable of cre-ating a situation of being-in-common, toorganize new aesthetic forms of commonlife, which means to bring artistic formsdirectly back to social formation.

The organizational principle of theproduction of space within an existingspace are especially important to theproject, because outdoor play is a spatialpractice, because play is a transversaloperation across space which cancirculate freely in a politically motivated



15


dysfunctionality, creating its own spacetraversed by freedom.

Re-activating the spaceRe-constructive objectivity serves as acritique not only of the White Cube asinstitutional space, but also a critique ofurban space which treats human subjectsin similar ways. The valorization and con-trol of the space regulates who has accessto and who enjoys visibility in this space,and which forms of labor remain hiddenand marginalized. Let us not forget thatthe concept of the White Cube was devel-oped as a means both of controlling thebehavior of the public and to allow easyclassi cation and taxonomy of art worksand practices.

This is why the project aims at re-activating space, an open and accessiblespace characterized by participationand collective agency – part laboratory,part community meeting place and placefor critical discussions and re ections,sometimes open air cinema, recognizingdifferent practices and social relationsfrom which an open eld emerges foraesthetical experiments and knowledgeproduction.

Through mediated access amicro-experimental environment oftransmediality is created, a productiveopen eld, a playground as an openand accessible platform. Besides spatialparameters such as the architecture, thisinvolves a network of relations to restoreand make visible the productive drift ofmeaning by means of rules, regulations,surveillance and plans for the future ofthis place.

A Place Without a Roof: betweenany urban constructions – public or

private – is air (the main common)Museums could say at their gates – butthey do not need to, since it so goeswithout saying – ‘Let no one enter hereunless they are lovers of art.’ (Bour-dieu) 40

Kunsthof is an exhibition space withouta roof. This condition in itself eliminates

40 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesisand Structure of the Literary Field , trans. Su-san Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 1996,

p. 289.

the nest of art and its “church-like” ex -hibition setting, and is conducive to poly-phonic transdisciplinary practices and theinvention of new forms of display, which

break out from the comfort of the interior-ized forms of art. These are practices andtheir objects that might open envelopescontaining multiple elements that operatebeyond the puri ed White Cube and itsinstitutionalized system, but at the sametime escape the practices of so-called landart, or garden sculpture display or some ofthe forms of public art that have becomeconventional, adapted to the laws of a re-structured urban environment.

The project intensi es this aspectof the potential of the space as acourtyard, taking advantage of allpossible disadvantages stemming fromits shady status and its social, culturaland political nature as a space betweenan institutionalized White Cube as anautonomous but self-limiting environmentfor art and everyday life, a place in-between exhibition space and the city asthe arena of life – the direct contact ofKunsthof with the street where the soundsof everyday life cannot be isolated away, itsdependency on the weather forecast andthe play of chance with good weather.

Between any urban constructions – pri-

vate or public – is air. I nd that theweather is the most important factor incontemporary urban life. Urban popula-tions are collectively subjected to in u -ence by weather in a much more radicalway than rural populations becauseweather is fundamentally dysfunctionalin the urban space: it is no more con-nected to agricultural needs. That iswhy weather has come to be the sym-bolic power that, in many ways, de nescollective psychology—the collective sen-sibility of a city. Weather is usually also

the most important topic of public con-versation. It allows us to experience acity as a totality, connects a city dwellerto the heavens, to fate, to the universe.(Boris Groys) 41

Along with the situation that every strollerpassing by can step into the space, allof this allows the space to be easily re-

41 Boris Groys, in Kurt Mueller, “6 Ques-tions for Boris Groys,” Art Lies , Issue 58, Sum-mer 2008 <http://www.artlies.org/article.php?id=1619&issue=58&s> (accessed 2013-03-

18).



16


connected to the everyday world of produc-tion, to the social fabric. In order to createa situation in which the relation betweenart practices and everyday practices are

re-activated (a relation that has beenmuch criticized, decried as the devaluedand foiled desire of artistic avant-gardesand art movements), the project takes arather optimistic stance regarding this re-lation and its productive potentialities sothat once again the art labor of aestheticproduction and labor as social production

– traditionally set in opposition to eachother – may meet in order to provoke theinvention of new forms of subjectivity andnew forms of collective practices.

Taking advantage of the spatial shadesof the place itself the project will raisecritical questions on inclusion andexclusion and their historical and politicalimplications and social dynamics. In thiswe refer to Bourdieu who criticizes thegallery and the museum as institutionsthat legitimize the aesthetics of the“ideology of the gift,” i.e., the aesthetics of“good eyes” building on the “social genesisof the eye” (Bourdieu), 42 or what Irit Rogoffcalls “trained eyes,” which immediatelygrasp codes of recognition that constituteboth quality and value, “a historicallyconstituted regime of perception and

intelligibility.” 43

Making use of the factthat Kunsthof is both inside and outsidethe system of the White Cube, a space in-between the institutionalized, historicallydetermined space in which art practicesas such are legitimized, and the publicurban space in which the art codes aredisplaced and unstable, the project willcreate a dysfunctional playground, a non-commercial open space for free play, bothfor true lovers and connoisseurs of art andfor the “common” inhabitants of the city.

Care will be taken not to make them“feel” out of place, but to contribute tothe availability of free, non-commercialalternative places for spending one’s freetime outdoors, a place for play but alsofor just spending time together for thosewho love art just like for those who for one

42 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesisand Structure of the Literary Field , trans. Su-san Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 1996,p. 313.

43 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics ,

trans. Gabriel Rockhill, Continuum, 2006, p. 50.

reason or another have not stepped intoan exhibition before.

Dimensions of Collective Playwith Aesthetic Objects andObjects of Knowledge

On Method: Coming from Research– dia-grammatical igure (concreteigure – the igure of truth)

A dysfunctional playground, a dia-gram-matical gure will be built on the basis ofcollective transdisciplinary micro researchon the origins of the playground as a socialtechnological apparatus and its forms, re-ecting the social conditions of the possi -

bilities of play in public spaces. The idea isnot only to turn the research into an objectas a spatial metaphor of apparatuses, butto build a dysfunctional machinic form, anantithesis or negation of the apparatus, acommon or shared ‘concrete’ object – bothobject of knowledge and aesthetic object

– through historicization, ethnographiciza-tion, formalization and reconstruction.

The project introduces a set oftools able to produce and unfold inthe middle ground a collective eld

of sharing knowledge and aestheticobjects as common, enabling an inquiryinto the forming principles and the re-con gurations of the given forms inorder to pry open, distress, and displaydominant codes inscribed historically intothis structure. The research will focus onthe discursive treatment of the collectedthematic and historical material and willaim at integrating thematic strata anddata into a material ‘concrete’ object,building a dysfunctional ‘prototype’ ofa playground structure in the spaceof Kunsthof. It will serve at the sametime as a discursive platform, a kind of



18


The Politics of Display The project Opportunities for Outdoor Play?Playgrounds – New Spaces of Liberty (TheQuestion of Form) refers to the etymologi-cal meaning of display , to deploy or unfold (related to the French déplier , unfold , ordéployer , deploy ), which not only does notexclude, but actually carries within itselfthe action, i.e. , the manifestation, like the

performative unfolding of a public state-ment, as in the unfolding of a ag, whichcombines within itself as a performativeopening both the action and the display.

Regarding the display the project willtake a critical view, and reconsider andrework the notions of the relation betweenproximity and distance and their relationto the viewers.

In the traditional exhibition ormuseum space the objects on displayand the viewers must usually remain at adistance of one another – an instrumentof domination and distinctions. How canthese relations be turned upside-downto invite the viewers to direct physicalexperience and body contact with the re-constructed playground structure andits objects in such a way that they canexamine it close up, and even play withthem?

The creation of such an environmentas a performative eld that allows playbetween them follows an approachappropriated from the theater of ‘literalart,’ but not as the theater of objecthood inwhich the main actors are the objects and

the aim is the subversive disintegration

and degeneration of the subject. Bearingin mind the radical de-materializationof the world in which objects of materialculture are vanishing and the subject ison the verge of disappearing, we want torehabilitate the materiality of the objectand of the body and the role of the humanagents.

A display will be elaborated inacknowledgment of the spatial, historicaland socio-economic relations and the waythey constitute the environment of thespace, critically re ecting on the systemof art and of knowledge itself, and on thecultural biases of our perceptions. Thematerial collected through the researchwill be treated as a ready-made, but notin the sense of Duchamp’s Fountain . Ourpurpose is not to transcend meaning andvalue in order to elevate the value of theauthorial gesture at the expense of theobject of art. These ready-made particlesgathered in the process of research will beused as building material, in the sense offound material and immaterial fragments,extracted from social reality, which allowsthem to be reorganized following principlesof assemblage without destroyingtheir codes in the course of their re-composition, a kind of decoding practicewhich changes their meaning.

The project aims to make the decisionsand approach of the transdisciplinarycollective involved in the project astransparent as possible, laying bare the

concrete mediating links between the

Léa Lublin, Dissolution dans l’eau, Pont Marie - 17 heures, 1978. Performance at Seine River,Paris.



19


structure of the artwork and the socialstructure, between the autonomous eldof art and the eld of the social space.What can we do to leave the codes visible

so that they remain readable, leaving thecontrol over them with the public, in orderto constitute play as an object and makeevident the nature of its rules, not onlyvia observation but in direct play with thecodes, to re-organize them into a non-signifying system?

Re-used construction materials,found on the street or remainingfrom torn-down buildings will beintegrated in the re-constructionof the playground, manipulatingform through dysfunctionality, thusasserting the autonomy of the eld ofcultural production while generating atransdisciplinary space.

Collective Labor Is Conceivable in Art The idea is not to ll the space temporar -ily with something that can be replaced byany other thing, but to let the social char-acter of the playground speak, bringingtogether collective aspects as well as sin-gular points such that “the construction ofan unstable and ephemeral situation en-

joins a displacement of perception, a pas-sage from the status of spectator to that ofactor, and a recon guration of place.” 46

The project endeavors to bring togetherthese singular perspectives in order toempower collective labor which can beconsidered a collective subject temporarilyconstituted from different singularities.

Adorno considers that “collective laboris conceivable in art,” 47 and indeed, thereis a long history of collectivity in art. Theproject takes this as a political argumentto engage in a practice that operates thesubversion of signing and branding, insupport of the singularity of the creator,

which constitutes a singular point of viewin space. Kunsthof will turn directly into aplace of production of the collective objectthere on the spot, in order to contributeto a critical discourse on the discrepancybetween “where art is made and where

46 Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and its Dis- contents , trans. Steven Corcoran, Cambridge,Polity Press, 2009, pp. 23-24.

47 Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory ,trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, Continuum, 2002

(1997), p. 42 (p. 53).

art is displayed,” 48 and at the same timedestabilize the myth of the individualcreator that positions him or her as aregulator of beliefs and ctions appearing

in the social order as property governingthe major part of the eld of art “asproliferation of signi cations.” (Foucault) 49

The project will interrogate howconstitutive and forming processes can bereversed in order to disentangle how theyare organized, and to put them to work foremphasizing the role of play that providesthe universal principle of the element offreedom we enjoy.

A Middle Ground – the object of artin-between the political and the

aesthetic The project would like to underline thedifference between replica and re-con-struction. Adorno proposed the conceptof objectivated reality that is capable ofserving as a middle term where art is notabout representation or imitation because“art is not a replica any more than it isknowledge of an object.” 50 Re-constructionincludes the interrogation of the conditionsof production of its archetypal object, fol-lowing Deleuze who sees the object of artas inhabiting this middle ground, or Ran-

cière, for whom it is in-between the politi-cal and the aesthetic.

Objectivated or mediated reality – themethod and logic of practice – lies in-between theory and practice, the socialand the aesthetic, and introduces thepractice of play that allows new forms ofalliances between the object of art and itspublic, and a re-composition of meaningin which the question is to make adifference between material and symbolicproduction, operating through a doublehistoricization, the conscious applicationof rules of production and interpretationof the material researched, while takingto the fore the awareness of the means of

48 Brian O’Doherty, Studio and Cube: On TheRelationship Between Where Art is Made andWhere Art is Displayed , Princeton ArchitecturalPress, 2008.

49 Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” inid. , Essential Works of Foucault (1954-1984),Volume 2: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology ,

The New Press, 1998, p. 221.


(1997), p. 285 (p. 366).



20


translating and decoding by the potentialpublic to empower them in their ownsituation on the one hand as a public,on the other, as participants in social

structures.How can this object mediate social

action, giving visitors all the means andinstruments for re-appropriating andmastering the codes as they play withthem? What instruments are requiredfor the public to follow the vocabularyof logic and the rules of its grammar tounderstand the ‘dispositions’ of axes andpoints affected by vectors in the game ofdistinctions as decisions are made andgive rise to forms? How can these be usedto recompose the hierarchies inherentto social forms in play and aestheticsensualism?

In other words, this should be astructure combining analytical, aestheticand critical principles, translatingthem to the formal language of self-restricted aesthetic production where thetransparent grammar constituting the lawof forms becomes as visible as possible,formalizing this re-construction into agenerative formula in order to denaturalizeit, by casting a spell, by inventing adecoding operation in order to providethe public with the opportunity of reading

what is displayed. This is to be a decidedlymaterial practice, being a negation of thetechnological dispositif .

The Love of Art as an aestheticand political project

The project will work to create situationsin which the “love of art” can be distrib-uted equally among the potential audi-ence of the project, irrespective of theirbackground and real experience with art.In this way from the society of art lovers

Bourdieu’s concept of the love of art as an‘aesthetic disposition’ is turned to work inand for the community of art lovers being-in-common, following closely MichaelHardt’s concept of love as a social and po-litical concept.

The action of love is also aboutinterrogating the appearance of form andforming principles, and about how onecan move from distinction to difference,because only through the love of differenceand the creation of difference the conceptof love can be turned into a political andaesthetic project and perspective.

Play Is Love – Play Creates Difference The intensity of love in itself creates differ-ence. “Intensity is the form of difference inso far as this is the reason of the sensible.Every intensity is differential, by itself adifference.” Hence, argues Deleuze, the ex-pression “difference of intensity” is a tau-tology. 51 Love is capable of initiating liber-ating political possibilities, which is whylove acts in the eld of play, not in the eldof the game – the latter being the kingdomof distinction and competition.

This shows the active character of love. This form of the love of art is not verydifferent from the love of life. 52 It disruptsthe relationship between the visible, theaudible, the sayable, and the thinkable,

and recomposes them. Schiller already,in his re ections on aesthetics, seems tohave had doubts about the oppositionbetween active understanding and passivesensibility. This is a bipolar, a sort ofdialectical distinction, made by the senseof logic in the name of common sense

– i.e. , middle-class bourgeois ideology(Deleuze).

The action of love is not about activeor passive, but about movement, materialor immaterial, sometimes invisible assuch but with an effect on the landscapeof the visible. The love of art and the loveof community have been segregated inthe name of a repressive, divisive andalienating power that imposed its controlover bodies and desires.

Bringing them back together can giverise to emancipatory practices, as love isa productive ontological force that cancreate and organize reality. The aestheticand political experience of love based onits object, which is art (which organizesnew forms of life and knowledge), orlife itself, can be distributed equally, todemystify hidden social forces, immaterial

and material hegemonic forms, referringto the concept of love as understood byFélix Guattari, Antonio Negri and MichaelHardt.

51 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition ,trans. Paul Patton, Continuum, 2004 (1994),p. 301 (p. 240).

52 John Guillory, “Bourdieu’s Refusal,” Nicho-las Brown, Imre Szeman (eds.), Pierre Bourdieu,Fieldwork in Culture , Rowman & Little eld,2000, p. 38. “Love of art is not so very differentfrom love of life, or at least the willingness to

live it.”



21


With Bourdieu’s The Love of Art – insearch of a new concept of love

In their seminal study of European art

museum audiences The Love of Art , PierreBourdieu, Alain Darbel and DominiqueSchnapper argue that this love is notspontaneous. 53 In their empirical socio-logical analysis, this love functions asa source of social identi cation and dif -ferences as perceptual skills perpetuatesocial strati cation. The love of art is acultural habitus of those who try to un-derstand the work of art thinking aboutthemselves as individualists with theirindescribable aesthetic experience whichresists any analysis. However, Bourdieushows that the cultivated taste of the artlover “is not a natural gift but a sociallyinculcated disposition which is distrib-uted unevenly,” 54 the result of a signify-ing process involving many agents andinstitutions. If this love is an attainment, ahistorical and social practice with a directcultural and economic effect, the questionis how a new principle can be invented inorder to redistribute it in such a way thatit circulate freely in the milieu withoutprivileging certain social strata or margin-alizing others.

If for Bourdieu the question is how

those who are excluded from this love,which generates cultural capital andmakes some feel superior to others, canget access to it through knowledge andmediation without losing sensual pleasure,the idea here is to nd ways to decapitalizeand detach from economic relations thelove of art and the play of art, careful notto produce surplus value. Because thislove is a matter of the common, has tocirculate freely, and cannot be measuredon the scale of economic value, be itmoney or symbolic capital.

The notion of cultural capital, as openas it may be in Bourdieu’s intention, istrapped in the logic of political-economiccapitalizing relations. The experience

53 Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Darbel and Domi-nique Schnapper, The Love of Art: EuropeanArt Museums and Their Public , trans. CarolineBeattie and Nick Merriman, Polity Press, 1997(1991).

54 Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Darbel and Domi-nique Schnapper, The Love of Art: EuropeanArt Museums and Their Public , trans. CarolineBeattie and Nick Merriman, Polity Press, 1997

(1991). Sleeve text.

and distribution of art, like of knowledge,has to be a matter of the common. Cannew relations of exchange with thepublic be invented? How can the regime

of art between aesthetics and politics,in combination with analytical methodsand discursive forms of knowledge,overcome the position of the privilegedlover of art and redistribute the sensualequally through a politics of differenceand of being-in-common. This love hasto be learned, is a matter of training – anaction-oriented and play-oriented form,a practice of knowledge. This is preciselywhy it can be oriented to a different andfree circulation.

The sensual and the cognitive cannot beseparated, since “a theoretical discourse isalways simultaneously an aesthetic form,a sensible recon guration of the facts it isarguing about.” 55 Adorno in his AestheticTheory discusses the connection betweentextuality and visuality, contributing to adiscourse in which the sensual and thecognitive-theoretical are not divided: “Theexperience of art becomes incomparablyricher through undistracted knowledge ofit. The intellectual study of a work re ectsback on its sensual perception.” 56 In thistrain of thought, art not only shows buttells, and itself generates knowledge, but

is also an embodiment of knowledge,and puts a philosophy of art and non-arttheory into practice in the sensual.

The Love of Art not as cultural capitalbut as commons

If the project works towards an equal re-distribution of the possibility of aestheticexperience, of the privileged love that isthe experience of art, how can a situationbe created through the very practices ofart (and not through the mediation of theinstitutions of art) so that this love can cir-culate not as cultural capital but as com-mons?

If love is simultaneously aestheticcreativity and production of knowledge,how can this love be turned into a socialpractice as aesthetic and political actionin the eld of art in the social eld? From

55 Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics ,trans. Gabriel Rockhill, Continuum, 2006, p. 65.


(1997), p. 312 (p. 395).



22


This may look like lust, but it functionsonly when mediated through knowledgeand cultural and social value, whichmeans that this is a signifying process,

and the art object is part of a signifyingchain.

One could therefore perceive the artobject as an object of desire (objet petita ), which is manipulatively put to work,appropriated by the apparatuses of theeconomy of commodity fetishism. Bourdieuhere is not far from Marx, but considersthat the “sensible love of the work canful l itself in a sort of amor intellectualisrei , the assimilation of the object to thesubject and the immersion of the subjectin the object.” 59 This amor intellectualisrei , or intellectual love of objects, based onintellectual effort, is the turning point fromwhich a new concept of love can emerge.

If for Bourdieu the love of art requirestraining and knowledge, one can say thatlove is a technique which brings togetherthe cognitive and the sensual. If this loveof art carries within itself the code of formsof love different from most concepts oflove, even if it looks like fetish-based loveor catharsis, it always has the potential toescape this trap and be realized as a socialand political practice.

This is why the love of art and its

desires can be mobilized for liberatingsocial action. If “all social action [is] likeart, in that it is founded on illusio or beliefin the game,” 60 the love of art can dissolvethe illusio and its representational regimeand break free from the belief in the game,into creative freeplay.

Another argument supporting this isthat art is no longer about producing orsupporting illusions and being part oftheir representational mechanisms, butabout the real and its realizations. This iswhy the love of art and its object, whichis art, is involved in organizing forms ofcommon life and social action through thedistribution of the visible and sensual,rather than working in symbolic structuresand ideological regimes.

59 Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesisand Structure of the Literary Field , trans. Su-san Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 1996,p. xix.

60 John Guillory, “Bourdieu’s Refusal,” inNicholas Brown and Imre Szeman (eds.), PierreBourdieu, Fieldwork in Culture , Rowman & Lit-

tle eld, 2000, p. 38.

the society of art lovers, how can we openand turn its concept to work in and for thecommunity of art lovers. This works onlyif love is put to action. The concept of love

in art and in the political combines thisspontaneous and impulsive enjoymentwith theoretical and educationalapproaches. Let us say, with Antonio Negridrawing on Spinoza, “that love, only love,can determine the relation between powerand knowledge.” 57

A crucial element of this is that suchlove of art is “neither capable of being fullyrationalized, nor materially caused,” 58 being intermediate between the elds,transversally crossing them. This is whythe notion of love can be seen not only asan aesthetic concept, since the negativeconception of love of the art object hasthe potential of being used as a doublenegation, as a subversive af rmation ofthe ‘aesthetic disposition.’ This gives it thepotentiality to be extended to a creativepolitical, social and aesthetic project.

Here love functions as both Eros andAgape, but is at the same time a practicelinked to a historical process and theproduction of knowledge. It is doublyexposed as sensual and cognitive. (In thisrespect one could re ect on the relationbetween Freud and Marx, desires, and

the affect as a political notion, and withDeleuze and Guattari, on the role ofdesires and affects as a political terrain.)In art different concepts of love cometogether, and can be realized in “love asa proliferation of differences,” followingMichael Hardt: we do not need to segregatethe concept of love freely given by thesovereign subject and love as povertybased on need. Either can be elevated intoa new political and social ow.

The lover of art pursues his/her ownaesthetic pleasure following the principlesof satisfaction. This sensual love of thework of art, like every love, is based inits object. For Bourdieu this relation isinscribed in the lexicon of love – thereis something sexual about the relationbetween the art lover and the art object.

57 Antonio Negri, “Appendix Two: Archeologi-cal Letter. October 1984, Antonio Negri,” inFélix Guattari and Antonio Negri, New Lines ofAlliance, New Spaces of Liberty , Autonomedia,2010, p. 142.

58 James Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Prob- lem of Literary Canon Formation , University of

Chicago Press, 2010, p. 332.



24


of God, for instance in Christian ethics inwhich this love turns into a spiritual loveof one’s fellow men.

And yet in contrast to these, love

as an artistic and political project is aconcept suf ciently liberated from moralimplications, which prepares the loveof art for freeplay in those spheres thathave remained unaffected by the logic ofthe market. The love of difference is nota moral judge. It is not a matter of thelove of the mother for her child, whichFoucault sees inscribed in the schemeof supply and demand, or the love of thesame (humanity, race, nation, etc.), orsome other form of game following thelogic of the market. This is love appliedto the non-economic domain, a non-self-identitarian cross communication basedon limitation in a eld, able to disrupt thegame that modulates the construction ofthe social body and reality, and to providean alternative to the conclusion that thereis no outside of the game.

Love as a radicalized and free politicalconcept applies to affective labor andits desires, which can be turned againstthe commodi cation and occupationof our entire life by the economy of thegame. Love is the only concept opposedto competition that dissolves the unifying

forces. Competition, in order to work,must be tied to a moral framework, suchas the belief in one’s team, or one’s nation,to compensate “for what is cold, impassive,calculating, rational, and mechanical inthe strictly economic game of competition.”Economic interests need to be maskedas moral subjects of non-economicsocial beliefs and behavior and ensure“‘a community which is not fragmented,’and guarantee cooperation between menwho are ‘naturally rooted and sociallyintegrated.’” 63

A Critical Stance Towards the Game –to draw a distinction means to be inthe game

The logic of distinctions is an operationthat changes the subject-object orientationin the space. Indeed it operates to sanction

63 Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics:Lectures at the Collège de France 1978-1979 ,trans. Graham Burchell, Palgrave Macmillan,2008, p. 243. Quoting Wilhelm Röpke, The So- cial Crisis of Our Times , Transaction Publishers,

1991, Part II, Ch. 2, p. 236.

the proliferation of difference “from theproduction of differences to their reduc-tion.” For Deleuze, distinction is the pro-ductive ow and signifying technology of

good sense: “it dreams less of acting thanof constituting a natural milieu.” It cancelsthe proliferation and multiplicity of differ-ence and produces the limited eld of thegame through calculation, measurement,austerity, installing a competitive marketenvironment.

Both distinction and difference area question of form – they are bothforming principles. Distinction can becharacterized as the law of forms, whereasplay is the freedom of forms. Throughmarking, xing and identifying, theendless process of drawing distinctionsis a formless process of giving form, theautomation of the eld of production.

Following Wittgenstein’s languagegame, George Spencer-Brown in TheLaw of Forms , 64 a work of formalmathematics and philosophy, developsthe self-referential calculus of indicationsand distinctions, a method he calls an‘autopoietic system,’ working on theprinciple of self-observation and constantproduction of distinctions: “by calling it,

you con rm it, by crossing it, you cancelit.” 65 In order for the process to start,

it has to “draw a distinction in the rstplace.” 66 It is important to note that hismethod is doing, performing or creatingthe form, not representing, classifyingor symbolizing, mimicking play as asimulacra of play. In the games of chanceso dear to the Surrealists, from the outsetchance is limited and manipulated,because it is not a matter of play but amatter of the game.

He for the rst time in mathematicsexplicitly included the observer in the

64 G[eorge] Spencer Brown, The Law of Forms , The Julian Press, 1972 (1969). “LoF becamesomething of a cult classic, praised in the WholeEarth Catalog. Those who agree point to LoF asembodying an enigmatic “mathematics of con-sciousness,” its algebraic symbolism capturingan (perhaps even the) implicit root of cognition:the ability to distinguish. LoF argues that the pa (primary algebra) reveals striking connectionsamong logic, Boolean algebra, and arithmetic,and the philosophy of language and mind.”(Wikipedia)

65 Dirk Baecker (ed.), Problems of Form , Intro-duction, Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 3.

66 Ibid.



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operations of calculus as a self-referentialpoint, thus producing asymmetry. Theseoperations are necessarily asymmetrical.

To x and give form, the rst step to

produce the process is the explicitinclusion of the observer in the operationsshe/he/it performs. In his/her/its systemthe observer is responsible for restrictionand exposure, through self-observation,through self-re ection, af rming FrederickWinslow Taylor’s model of self-control.

It was Taylor already who had basedhis optimization of working processes inthe factory on the symptoms of hysteriaand their therapy, and transferred theconcept of control from the schemes ofthe panopticon or the theatre of illnesstowards self-control as a discipliningmechanism installing a system of totalcontrol, only as “the observation ofthe observer,” which breaks with thehistorical construction of spectatorshipand brings the completely new concept ofcompulsively being a spectator of yourself.

In Spencer-Brown’s law of forms, “thesocial realm is understood to be therealm of communications performingobservation.” 67 This was to in uencedifferent elds of science from evolutionarybiology to social system theory. AsLuhmann states, social systems emerge on

the level of second-order observation.Even if games are played they are notof the domain of the freedom of play.

They are coalitions between players witha xed set of rules based on an unwrittencontract between the players, usuallyrequiring a speci c game situation. Agame is not play, even if it contains thepotentiality of play. Its repetition doesnot produce difference. Play is that whichremains unrealizable.

Text: Dimitrina Sevova

67 Ibid. , p. 4.

opportunities for outdoor play

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