Seeing <—> Making Room for Thought presents the reader with a series of rooms, a collection of images, bundles of text some of which together make stories and others which make for a loosely affiliated ’surround’ that gives rise to a kind of umwelt of (textual and visual) ideas. Room 3 “Field of Action, Space for Play” intensifies this non-linear approach by bringing together a collection of images and quotes which together make a sort of disjointed visual essay of impressions that loosely gather into a broader sentiment/thesis.
The chapter can itself be read as play, and invites the reader to consider, at it’s outset:
It is a “picture-history network of citations; Ode to spielraum”
“The elements of this exhibition are not only the concern of the artist: they are yours. We all share the same environment; we are all in the same boat” Group 1, This Is Tomorrow
“To be sure, play is always liberating.” Walter Benjamin
Working to bring about constellations and patterns of visual-intellectual history, much as this picture-history exhibition does, the constellations project becomes its own space for play. Non-linearity opens up the possibility to create networked connectivity where everything is encountered not as a beginning nor end but as a middle space wherein ideas are contained at their singular point of encounter, continually open to revision and thus not perceived as some finality but rather as a malleable medium for play.