Date of Award
Spring 6-2-2018
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Graphic Design
First Advisor
Bethany Johns
Second Advisor
Lucy Hitchcock
Third Advisor
Keetra Dean Dixon
Abstract
Work is part of our identity and dictates how workers spend most of their time in the US. This obsession has truncated our imagination and ability to conceive of alternatives. As a tactic to reclaim free time, I offer a practice I refer to as squishy play in which participants momentarily adopt new social norms to collectively discover new ways of engaging with the world and each other.
I use squishy play as a lens to investigate the power structures, social norms, and material output of late capitalism in the US. Squishy play is generous in its frivolity. It is mobile. It allows for new modes of thinking. It is resilient and adaptive to the world it is given. It is inherently interactive.
In squishy play, I use bluntness, absurdity, repetition, transparency, translation, and an economy of moves to foreground the deeply embedded values and social structures of society. Squishy play knows that it must not take itself too seriously, but never forgets that it also must take itself really really seriously.
Recommended Citation
Traugott-Campbell, Lauren, "Squishy Play" (2018). Masters Theses. 211.
https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/211
Creative Commons License
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