Stop Making Sense- Play Havoc! Antagonism at play- Critical Art Practices. Sinead Aldridge. Public talk at National University of Ireland Galway as part of the Muscailt Festival 7th Feb. 2012
“Playful art implicitly says ‘this is all a game’ and ‘you can re-write the rules’. At the same time it demands that you commit yourself fully to it’s fiction, to experience it’s disruptive effect. The way in which children, who have not yet fully internalised hegamonic thinking and behaviour, engage in the most imaginative, intense forms of play can be used as a model for critical art. While we should not be naïve about the socially constructed state of childhood, nor assume that power does not play a role, we can admire the sense that everything is provisional, but none the less intense and committed for that. A children’s game, played on this level, is never just a game. The game is always a meta-game. The rules are always open to re-writing. Children negotiate the ground and content of their game, the way that that conflict arises, and causes abrupt transformations or they often choose to end the game when they cease to find pleasure in it.”