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The great archetypal activities of human society are permeated with play from the start · Jul 25, 13:10

Claire Bishop, Installation Art, pp 80-94

Niklas Luhman, Art as a Social System, p 244
“One of the incalculable effects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy was to raise the question of whether a concept of art can be defined. If the notion of play defies definition, then art should remain undefined as well. This view was widely held in the 1960s. It denies only the possibility for a defenition that corresponds the to “essence” of art and holds unequivocally for all observers but instead leaves the decision of what counts as art to the art system itself.” p 244

Vito Acconci, Language to Cover a Page

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, pp 1-4
“The great archetypal activities of human society are all permeated with play from the start. Take language for instance—that first and supreme instrument which man shapes in order to communicate, to teach, to command. Language allows him to distinguish, to establish, to state things; in short, to name them and by naming them to raise them into the domain of the spirit. In the making of speech and language the spirit is contiunally “sparking” between matter and mind, as it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty. Behind every abstract expression there lie the boldest of metaphors, and every mataphor is a play on words. This in giving expression to life man creates a second, poetic world alongside the world of nature.” p. 4

Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play