| Summary: | This thesis analyzes contemporary participatory installation art, play theory, especially Johan Huizingas seminal Homo Ludens, and the aesthetic theories of Nicolas Bourriauds Relational Aesthetics and Jacques Rancires Politics of Aesthetics. Ping Pond Table 1998 by Gabriel Orozco and Test Site 2006 by Cartsen Hller are studied to illustrate how play and the aesthetic can become political by repositioning the contemporary viewer as an active and playing participant in the artwork, prompting an awareness of the matrix of power between audience, artwork and institution, and by creating the possibility for dynamic social roles. This thesis, like the artworks it examines, invokes a conception of play as a vital construct of culture rather than simply the domain of childhood imagination. Overturning the dominant concept of play and reinstating play in adult life becomes a political act because it engages adults in liberated, creative thinking that challenges traditional, consumer-driven, practical and thus constructive behaviours.
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