Stuff I thought about recently
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Playing with playfulness
For many years, I have been pondering the relationship between ‘play’ and ‘playfulness’. I have come to believe that the very possibility of distinguishing between play and playfulness has been vastly overstated. The more I think about it, the less sense it makes to view them as separate entities. They are perhaps more like units…
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Embracing Vulnerability
I was wandering and so were my thoughts, slowly following an all but invisible path through the forest, when I saw a duck take flight from a small pond. I paused for a moment, following its trajectory across the sky, before I sat down on a tree stump, surrounded by birds chirping. Most of my…
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PhD defence materials
On April 9th 2024, I had my PhD ‘defence’ (which I insisted was not actually a defence, but more like a ‘campfire conversation’), where I presented my PhD project, ‘The Junk Playground as Agora: Designing for Playful Democratic Frictions’, to the committee and all the lovely people in the room. It was an intense, but…
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After the PhD Defence
Wow. These days, after my defence-not-a-defence on April 9th, I’m exhausted, hardly hanging together, but also deeply, profoundly grateful. Grateful for the opportunity to pursue this wild, unpredictable passion project; grateful for the generous support along the way; grateful for the careful reading by the committee, and not least grateful for all the incredible people…
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Recovering from the PhD
It’s been a few weeks (well, more like a month, if we’re counting) since I handed in my PhD thesis at Design School Kolding. The final title is this: The Junk Playground as Agora: Designing for Playful Democratic Frictions The very careful observer may notice that it changed a little from my long-standing working title,…
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I cry, I hope
Over the past years, I have become increasingly attentive to my own affective responses to things, all things, every thing. I am in the world, flesh and all, something happens, and I am moved, affected. I don’t know quite how to talk about this (affect theory is still quite puzzling to me), but I try.…
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There Will Come Soft Rains
Just as the rain started to fall softly, almost cautiously, after a month of warm, dry weather, I stumbled upon a poem by Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (thanks Rikke for sharing!), and while apparently it’s written at the end of WWI in 1918, it feels strikingly timely: There will come soft rains…
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A Trembling World
I was visiting a local artist one day, where we talked about the inadequacies of Enlightenment ideals, the myth of the disembodied (yet distinctly male), autonomous individual and all that. She said: “Those ideals, they will soon die. Everything is trembling, almost falling over. Can’t you feel it?” Yes, I replied. I feel it, too.…
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Doing Democracy Otherwise
This was not meant to be shared, it was just something I had to get out of my system, to clear my thoughts, but now I put it here (as the joke goes, this is exactly the place to put things to avoid people reading it). It’s hastily written and polemic, no references, no nothing,…
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A letter to me
In this journey of transformation and becoming that I have embarked on with the PhD, writing has been one my biggest blessings – and one of my most painful curses. I love writing so much that my world almost falls apart when I suddenly can’t write. Then I spend hours and days just staring at…