Playground: Manifest (EN)

PLAYGROUND (English)


Introduction


Paraphrasing a Portuguese philosopher, Agostinho da Silva, Man was not born to be enslaved, but to be an unleashed poet.
That curious, creative, dreamer child, that one day lived inside us, no longer exists. And why? It is a natural fact that in life all children pass to the adult phase and become conscious individuals of their own existence, yearning for the occupation of their place in the world. And, what it is our place in the world? Where is it? How do we know it?
Contemporary society is living in an ideological paradox. The adopted economic system, [considered] being the most viable, is [supposedly] supported on ideals of freedom and democracy and while simultaneously on a pyramid, castrator of these same ideals. More It is all more like a struggle for survival. This this system, survives with the existence of slave-volunteers, human beings in composing the base of the pyramid, that wait while waiting their ascension in that pyramid.



Technocracy and Utilitarianism…


In a pyramidal society dominated by technocracy and utilitarianism, the competition is considered beneficial, a surplus an added value, and group-work is valued while paradoxically cooperation [— working in a group].
The group, seen incessantly, as a form to obtain a greater and faster production, is submitted to traditional technical protocols being obliged to execute them without any place for the useless, and even less a place space for the error — that which curiously had offered us a great part of our knowledge. Also art suffers with this stigma.
Not having existing place for the useless, the curiosity, the dream or the error that permits allow us to learn, [also] there is not a place for the creation of new possibilities. The It is preferred the purist [quasi-puritan] crossing of that which what already exists is thus preferred, appealing to resorting on the technical control.
Even tough Even if the scientific method keeps offering us its probabilities, the experimentation continues blocked in its flanks not being able to create facilitating the creation of more [/new] possibilities.
The fate of the World is thus at in the hands of a dictatorship of Technique. Man, [while] becoming further from its individuality, is not born anymore to be a poet, but [instead] to be one useful technician useful to the society.



Creativity I: the Error, the Drift


The famous expression Errare humanum est, followed the technological progress of occidental western society. The Globalization carries today this affirmation to the World, using it as an excuse for the failure of great human projects such as Liberty.
To think The idea that Man needs to forgive himself for being human, seems completely ridiculous if we think that no other animal does it. A dog will never stop being canine, and a cat to be feline. But Man wants to stop being human! He wants more!
The Error is seen therefore as a limitation of human being, who incapacitates the man to reach a more deificated deified platform. It seems to me however contradictory, to think of Error in this way, when throughout all of human history, Error appears as the most creative form, the most sublime tool of the human creation. I do not think therefore that to miss fail (incurring in the error) is the worse thing among the characteristics of human beings.
The Drift [(Dérive)] is directly connected to the random aleatory, and therefore also to Error. Many examples can It is possible to be analysed throughout all of the history of art many examples, as many technical drifts, as conceptual, or such others as the drift through the cities practiced by the Situationists.
The Drift is an intellectual process that is often underestimated, only because of the connection to Error.



Creativity II: the Barriers and the Limitations


All of being, because it lives and it is sensible, is born limited.
All beings are born limited because they live and are sensitive.
The Physical barriers are already limits supposedly limitations to human free will.
The Laws, norms and rules, create more laws, norms, rules and disturbed conducts. The Life seems more and more restrictive! The Children stop being children and are put in the school to be standardised. To the most special, it is demanded that they become specialised. The Parents can not be parents any more, because they have to work. Family? Time, time time, where is the time? There is no time! Youth suicides increase. It increases the pessimism in the future. All the ways seem blocked. Freedom? Future? A system exhausted, eroded and without more references. Where are the machines that the futurists were speaking used to talk about? Where are the enslaved slave [/servant] machines? Are they the clocks, the mobile phones, the computers? Are they the Press, the Radio, or the Television? Will be this be the future? The fear, the terror, the fragility created inside of protective barriers?



Art and Play (playground)


The word "Brincadeira", can be perhaps translated into English as "Children's Games" Child's play.
The word that seemed more to me more illustrative to me for this case it was the place for of the activity, (recreio) the Playground in English, (for proximity due to "brincar" = to play, to toy, to joke).
Paraphrasing, Johan Huizinga, professor and Dutch historian, the culture was born [while] playing (with[/at] the playground). And this one is therefore older than that one the other.
To play is an activity that we all know, but that which we consider as childish. The word acquires most of the times a depreciative derogatory character, because it is seen as opposing the work [(an obstacle)]. They are assumed There's the assumption that who does not work, plays, amuses himself and therefore does not produce.
It is Because there is a preconception [/prejudice] about playing [(child's play)], that never it does not receives receive due attention especially to its enormous creative potential.
To play is perhaps the most primary human intellectual activity of the Man, perhaps [the] most creative, therefore because it is not about a forced production. Amusement, (to have fun), is the main goal and the main characteristic. It is probably the most all about pure intellectual pleasure.
The Art as being part of the culture is therefore, coming from the play (playground).
Although the Art has used (the play), the aesthetic of child production (for example drawings) in the production of some aesthetics, never was the playground claimed as the origin of the artistic production.
The Therefore Art is now more close closer, to the playground and further from a forced production that does not possess any diversion fun or pleasure.
Contemporary art, can now know acknowledge its reasons, and find a fusing melting point [(being liquid)].
Shall Let get free now, the thinker-child, the philosopher-practitioner, the artist-creator be freed.




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I want to play! I want to play. Ei ei ei Hey hey hey!
The system should work for me. I only want to be creator.
I want to play, to be able to draw. To jump, to play a game or to think.
Perhaps today to only to contemplate…
I do not want plus again a forced, frustrated, limited production…
I want amuse myself and to paint and to sculpt if I want, to look new forms, to discover or to imitate.
And I do not want to be a child! I only want to have the right to play, as the children do!
I want myself to amuse! I want to be, to grow, to learn without stopping!
I want to be able to play.
And I should be paid pay me for it, and that which is absolutely fair! [Because] I also feed you all with my knowledge.
I want to [be able to] play and finally be able to be what I am!





Cracow, 4th May, 2007

Leandro Bento

(Edited on 07-11-07 and revised on 30-04-17)