Produktive Unbestimmtheit – Playgrounds and Sandboxes als aisthetische Ermöglichungsformen

Ein Werkstattbericht

Abstract

Productive Indeterminacy - Playgrounds and Sandboxes as Aisthetic Enablers. A Workshop Report
The following remarks are about a hitherto little-noticed research object in the field of a cultural and media history of play, namely playgrounds and sandboxes or sand as a paradigmatically amorphous medium of play. Playgrounds are historically specific architectures and embody institutionalised ideologies and power relations. Their cultural history is determined by pedagogical, governmental, social-reform and artistic movements that wrestle with the relationship between freedom and control and are shaped by divergent ideas of education and reform thinking, urban planning and social theory, art and childhood, the individual and disciplinary power. They are staged spaces that invite play, and the analysis of their materiality and aesthetic forms aims at describing the play-genuine connection that is forged between players and the world of play, or the play-specific intuition - or insight - to organize spaces and bodies in a way that incites exploration of what surrounds us and who we are. In this sense, playgrounds are predestined scenarios for the attempt to understand play in its environmental nature, which evokes encounters, as aesthetic forms of enabling and 'choreographic' architectures in which these intense connections between player and play object, between people and their surrounding world, unfold. The question is therefore not only: What are playgrounds? but also: What are the grounds of play?