| Date: | 9th of February 2023 |
| Time: | 9:15-12:00 |
| Place: | Gæstecafeen on the 6th floor, SDU Campus Kolding |
| Registration: | Please submit a short abstract (300 words), before 18th of December 2022 to: Ida Jørgensen, idka@sdu.dk Registration after deadline is accepted by agreement with the organizers. Please contact: idka@sdu.dk |
| Participants: | The seminar will be able to accommodate around 12 PhD-students who will be selectes based on their abstracts. |
| Further information: | For questions about the seminar please write to Ida Jørgensen - idka@sdu.dk |
| ECTS: | 0,5 |
PhD seminar:
The cultural- and biopolitics of design for play
This half-day symposium will inquire into the cultural and biopolitics of design for play. Throughout modernity play has been a concern of philosophers, educators, health practitioners and legislators who have both associated play with immoral qualities and praised its supposed potential to support cognitive and physical development, to function as an instrument for physical and moral disciplining, and to produce both creative and virtuous citizens.
However, play is not confined to children’s playgrounds and playrooms. Today play can be found in all wakes of society, as it has been utilized for many “serious purposes” ranging from the “playification” and “gamification” of services and products related to health and education, to discourses on playful work that flourish within the creative industries and beyond. With its connotations of agency, creativity, disruption, pleasure and fun, play offers these more “serious” and “productive” domains of society lofty promises of self-directed, engaged and intrinsically rewarding engagement.
Today, play is a highly commercialized sphere of design, with ever more novel toys and products for play designed and pushed on the market for consumption in both the domestic and public spheres by children as well as adults. The shifting cultural- and biopolitics of the day has been tightly coupled with this commodification of play, as games, toys and equipment for play is branded and sold as means for achieving the good life.
This seminar addresses the politics of design for play and inquire into alternative visions for how to understand and care for play and players through design. Ben Highmore, Professor of Cultural studies, University of Sussex, will offer a lecture based on his work on the cultural politics of playgrounds, follow by two short perspective-taking talks by the local organizers: Harun Kaygan, Associate Professor, SDU, on bodies, well-being and care, and Ida Jørgensen, Postdoc, SDU on care in and around games and play. The seminar will conclude with a round-table discussion, in which Ph.D. students will be asked to discuss their own research considering the themes addressed in the seminar.
This seminar is targeted Ph.D. students in the fields of design, play and games, health and (children´s) culture.
Program
- 9.15 – 9.30: Welcome and introductions by Ida Jørgensen
- 9.30 – 10.15: Presentation by Ben Highmore
- 10.15 – 10.30: Short presentation by Harun Kaygan
- 10.30-10.45: Break
- 10.45-11.00: Short presentation by Ida Jørgensen
- 11.00-11:55: Roundtable discussion
- 11.55 – 12.00 Conclusions
Syllabus:
Highmore, Ben. "Playgrounds and Bombsites: Postwar Britain's Ruined Landscapes." Cultural politics 9, no. 3 (2013): 323-336.
Sutton-Smith, B. (1997).” Play and Ambiguity”, in The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press: 1-17.
McKendrick, J. H., Bradford, M. G., & Fielder, A. V. (2000). Kid customer? Commercialization of playspace and the commodification of childhood. Childhood, 7(3), 295-314.
DiSalvo, Carl (2022)” What might be the speculative social?” in Mareis, C., Greiner-Petter, M., & Renner, M. (eds). Critical by Design?: Genealogies, Practices, Positions (p. 332). transcript Verlag: 230 – 246.