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PLAY
AGAIN



“Memorials communicate the sum of sobering realities of our age” – Maya Lin. "Outrageously magical things happen when you mess around with a symbol.” David Hammons. “We all know that the earth rotates under our feet; how do we feel what we know.” Doreen Massey. “Don’t follow old people; old people get scarred by things. Don’t follow me.” Dr. Norman H. Ellingsen, M.D., in relation to hearing about Vito Acconci’s “Follow Piece”, 1969, on the facing page, bottom images.







This studio approaches PLAY as concept and design tool for sense and non-sense beings, Homo Ludens literate, Hermes agency, hodologically speaking memory echoes, being in-person, not merely in-principle. (Our sincerity will not save us, as self-identified crip poet Laura Hershey says). Now Memory, as Henri Bergson says, thing agency, being in the way; memorials as experienced representation, and professionally speaking, bio-physical-chemical contracts, illogical leaps, pedagogic STEAM jumps, STEM trickles, drip lines, guitar solos, Han Solo, brave Gretels. Neural memorial mats include the road less traveled, by mushrooms perhaps, inventing now “Realometers” (tools to measure the complex twisted realities around us – as Thoreau says in Walled-in, “Walden”), and not with “minds like beds already made up”, WCW; Patterson. We will read aloud “A Raison in the Sun” (Lorraine Hansberry), and perform the play in public spaces. We work at 1-to-1 scale, Strollogically inclined, practicing communication tack, while engaging in the Chinese techniques of Viewing-in-motion, Viewing-in-stillness, borrowed-views… We will grow an MLA sub-branch: MFC (Master of Fine Cooperation), Emotionally Intelligent Design… We will reenact Following Piece in NYC; engage the body as scientific instrument while cultivating scientific intuition. We come from all over, and here too, in the future now, in tomorrows thoughts today, and in recognition that Your Engagement Has Consequences. We are Sisyphus’ of Small things. PPP slanted. Politics, People, Perception based*. We are stirring, wet, moldy, moving, memory entities, dissolving things, disappearing things, folding anaerobe to sound-quasars, Spit temples, community to

individual expressions, re-approaching disturbing place-based histories, public objects, private views, considering Interoperative Philosophies, socially speaking, structuring and unstructuring public biases, boxes, field-narratives, urban plots rooted in colossal ignorance, as James Baldwin says, regarding racial segregation. PLAY AGAIN, AGAIN works in co-producing knowledge systems, anthropocentric ritual, public ceremony, pubic memory, new-narratives, and while encouraging non-W.I.E.R.D design points-of view (Western Industrialized Educated Rich Democracies). Memorials will be designed as pre-linguistic experiences of memory that pose present-questions, while opposing right answers.

*NOTE: P in PPP, can also stand for Place, Poetics, pants, purrs, you, and Panda.




Students:


Bowen Chai

Zhiyi Feng

Jiaqi Guo

Weicong Huang

Yixin Jiang

Sweeta Jura

Heyue Liu

Jonathan Myers

Jingyang Shi

Nanqi Wang



TA:  Natia Kapanadzie

Assistant Professor:  Eric Ellingsen



Partners:


Missouri School of the Blind:

Tim Cobb (Mobility and orientation traner)

Carlie Lee



Pulitzer Foundation:

Kristin Fleischmann Brewer



Studio Land Arts:

Christopher Carl





Ambassadors of the Why
Final Guests:


Jonathan Solomon – School of the Art Institute, Chicago

David Cunningham – Sociology, Wash U

Alex Bradley – Geology, Wash U

Timothy Portlock – Fine Art, Wash U

Jenny Price – S Fox, Wash U

Christopher Carl – Studio Land Arts

Derek Hoeferlin – S Fox, Wash U

Micah Stanek – S Fox, Wash U

Jacqueline Margetts – S Fox, Wash U




Mid-term guests:


David Cunningham

Petra Kempf

Geoff Ward

Christopher Carl

Derek Hoeferlin

Micah Stanek

Jacqueline Margetts




NYC excursion – walks and talks with:


Theodore Hoerr – Terrain work

Isabel Castilla – Field Operations

Julia Debski – Tanya Bonakdar Gallery

Jesse Seldess – poet

Ed Keller – The New School

David Rothenberg – NJIT

AJ Pires – ALLOY

Christopher Junkin – Rogers Partners

Thaddeus Pawlowski – Columbia University