en jeu RUTH OLDHAM and EMILIE QUENEY
We are Emilie and Ruth. Emilie is from France but lives in the UK. Ruth is from the UK but lives in France. Language-location mirror (and we tend to speak in French and write in English). We are both qualified architects though neither of us practices, in the traditional sense, anymore. However, we do continue to work very closely around architecture, probably in search of some, or more, playfulness. We have started a conversation in response to the call for articles for issue 44, ‘architecture and play’. Ruth told Emilie about the call, as it was so closely connected to her work. Emilie suggested they respond together. Ruth had just returned from a conference workshop about collective collaborative writing so this seemed like a fun idea. How might the ping-pong of ideas make new thoughts emerge, enable more creativity and elasticity in the thinking, more nourishment of ideas and more discussion? I find exciting the fact of creating a situation of play in the act of writing itself, by giving that game rules, time and free thinking. We began by asking ourselves some questions: What do we want to say about architecture and play? How can we think and write together? Can we write a text as a dialogue? As a cadavre exquis ? Can I give you a word and you respond, and vice-versa? What if we take some words from the call, and respond to them? If the rules/limits/framework of this game are that it is a dialogue, taking place on the page, what might we manage to say?
for the sake of play I feel we should start with this. ‘ Sake ’ is such an amazing English word, so appropriate in this case, and not easy to translate into French. Looking at the etymology, I can see there is no common root, so it might just be a fantasy, but for me, it has a sense of sacredness. Ha! This is great, I had never really thought about how hard it is to translate ‘sake’ but it is a curious word, and I kind of understand why you link it to sacredness... There is a sort of linguistic playfulness... the two words have a phonetic similarity, and a connection in terms of meaning...; for the sake of something, means that something is special, sacred, an effort must be made to preserve it. And indeed, even if we are in a world where playfulness is everywhere, as a gamification in service of making capitalism as enjoyable as possible, we can’t reduce play to a pleasurable addition to our daily lives. Play has no use, or at least can’t be reduced to definite functions or categories such as pleasure, education, physical exploration, expending excess energy, expression of competitiveness, enacting fantasies, sport, gambling, role play, etc... Play is linked to our human condition, beyond anything reasonable and pragmatic, it expresses our intrinsic thirsts and needs. Friedrich Schiller wrote, ‘Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays’.
This is where considering architecture regarding play touches my soul because architecture is also an expression of higher human aspirations, beyond any practicalities, something no one needs and everyone needs simultaneously. Looking at this necessity requires stepping back and taking a holistic view. Thinking about the meaning of ‘sake’ led me to the word ‘stake’. Perhaps simply because it rhymes. What is at stake if we do not play? Our humanity! For the sake of meaningless joy, we must play! For the sake of humanity, we must play! And then the realisation that ‘at stake’ translates into ‘en jeu’ in French. Ce qui rentre en jeu par le jeu (what is at stake through play), or even, ce que met en jeu l’absence du jeu (what is at stake when there is no play). In Homo Ludens, Johann Huizinga studied play and place in this holistic, sacred and humanist context: free (in all senses), having its own place, rules, order and time. Through play, one spontaneously experiments and lives something not yet known and therefore grows from that experience.
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on site review 44 : play ©
Oldham+Queney
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