A playful enquiry into “playfulness” as a value in critical cultural practice.
Casco Issues is a magazine published by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory (
www.cascoprojects.org), which explores recurring issues that emerge from Casco's program. The twelfth edition of
Casco Issues,
Generous Structures, is a playful enquiry into “playfulness” as a value in critical cultural practice. It positions alternative notions of playing against the grain of neoliberal ideologies of “lifelong learning” and “work as play.”
By taking the idea of playing and the metaphor of the game as a starting point, the publication addresses what might be called a “ludic turn”—the impact of the notion of play and gaming methods in various research fields and cultural work. Most prominent in the Internet industries and interactive media landscapes, but also in theoretical reflections, historical research, and the work of artists and designers, we are experiencing an interest in play as an educational tool or model for participation. However, with the conscious exception of the game per se, the publication attempts to trace its current impact and critical capacity, and explores various notions as well as concrete modes of play including activities such as learning, sharing, and group work, in relation to space, art, and design. It is driven from a methodological interest in the structure of playing, in its dialectics of rules and possibilities, planning and non-planning, collectivity and individuality. A game, in this sense, is not only characterized by its rules—or, on the contrary, by the liberty of the playing individuals—but is rather a construction of conscious interaction, application and transgression.
