THE DISCIPLINE OF PLAY
Artistic work paradoxically involves the discipline of play. For play is not activity undertaken lightly. It requires commitment, a capacity for sticking at something beyond all sense of reason, of utility or purpose. Not-yet-performance, rather a process of per-forming. Per-forming — the preposition (per-) indicating through, a forward-through movement, forming and deforming. Doing and undoing. Turning things over. Over and over, yet not the Sisyphean labour of exhaustive repetition, relentless and unceasing. Meaningless work, yes, still not absurd, not futile. Play exhausts things as a method for inviting in something new. Exhaust — to draw out all that is essential, also to drain of strength. To empty or make weak, fatigue. Exhaustion is a way of tiring out the tried-and-tested such that something else might then emerge, where habit is fatigued to release its hold, becomes weakened or disempowered. Fatigue — to drive to the point of break down; to crack or split, but also with its origin in the root agere meaning to set in motion. Play’s act of emptying out of sense or meaning is hopeful — it makes a clearing for the unexpected to arise. Making material acquaintance — a getting-to-know things to not-know, familiarity for rendering strange. Play is inherently wasteful, for its expenditure of effort and energy does not require anything back in return. Play has intention without expectation or goal. It is autotelic — from autos ‘self’ and telos ‘goal’ — for it has no end or purpose other than itself.
From Emma Cocker, How Do You Do? (Nottingham: Beam Editions, 2023)