Unleashed: Play and Its Discontents
an exhibition about the social and infrastructural characteristics of play, and the innate human need for unscripted interactions with each other in the physcial realm.
Concept
Play is essential to humanity. It builds community. It forges bonds and fosters creativity. It innovates. Play is freedom, whereas unscripted interactions with each other and our surroundings—without a purpose in the world—has been the underlying force of human development for centuries. Yet, in a contemporary culture beset with technologies that assign product, content, and goal to each activity, decision, and interaction of daily life—where is play? Where are the pleasures of improvisation and the joys of uncertainty, the value of chance and potency of spontaneity? Where are unscripted moments that offer the indulgences of simply being in common?
Unleashed: Play and Its Discontents takes us on a journey from the 1920s to present with works by artists that prioritize the social and infrastructural characteristics of play in the physical realm. The exhibition dispenses with the algorithmic technologies of the screen and the scripted contests of games, leaving behind these discontents in exchange for looking at the innate need for humans to be together, unleased in unstructured irrational, and illogical situations—to play.
Play is essential to humanity. It builds community. It forges bonds and fosters creativity. It innovates. Play is freedom, whereas unscripted interactions with each other and our surroundings—without a purpose in the world—has been the underlying force of human development for centuries. Yet, in a contemporary culture beset with technologies that assign product, content, and goal to each activity, decision, and interaction of daily life—where is play? Where are the pleasures of improvisation and the joys of uncertainty, the value of chance and potency of spontaneity? Where are unscripted moments that offer the indulgences of simply being in common?
Unleashed: Play and Its Discontents takes us on a journey from the 1920s to present with works by artists that prioritize the social and infrastructural characteristics of play in the physical realm. The exhibition dispenses with the algorithmic technologies of the screen and the scripted contests of games, leaving behind these discontents in exchange for looking at the innate need for humans to be together, unleased in unstructured irrational, and illogical situations—to play.
Tarek Atoui
Sonia Boyce
Lygia Clark
Martin Creed
Jacob Dahlgren
Cao Fei
Na Kim
Yuko Mohri
C. Spencer Yeh
Tatsuo Miyajima
Bruno Munari
Rivane Neuenschwander
Palle Nielsen
Nils Norman
Hélio Oiticica
Mika Rottenberg
Thomas Scheibitz
Oskar Schlemmer
Wadada Leo Smith
Ulla von Brandenburg