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First and foremost, then, all play is voluntary activity · Jul 27, 14:18

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, p,7

Annette B. Weiner, The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea, pp 88-104

Claire Bishop, Installation Art, pp 96-116

Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, pp 4-11
“First and foremost, then, all play is voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be a forcible imitation of it. By this quality of freedom alone, play marks itself off from the course of the natural process. It is something added thereto and spread out over it like a flowering, an ornament, a garment. ” p. 7

“Play is superfluous. The need of it is only urgent to the extent that the enjoyment of it makes it a need. Play can be deferred or suspended at any time. It is never imposed by physical necessity or moral duty. It is never a task. It is done at leisure, during “free time.” Only when play is a recognized cultural function—a rite, a ceremony—is it bound up with notions of obligation and duty. Here we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom.” p. 8

“This “only pretending” quality of play betrays a consciousness of the inferiority of play compared with “seriousness,” a feeling that seems to be something as primary as play itself. Nevertheless, as we have already pointed out, the consciousness of play being “only a pretend” does not by any means prevent it from proceeding with the utmost seriousness, with an absorption, a devotion that passes into rapture and, temporarily at least, completely abolishes that troublesome “only” feeling. Any game can at any time wholly run away with the players. The contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid. The inferiority of play is continually being offset by the corresponding superiority of its seriousness. Play turns to seriousness and seriousness to play. Play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness far beneath.” p. 8

“The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a “spoil sport.” The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its illusion—a pregnant word which means literally “in play” (from inlusio, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out because he threatens the existence of the play community.” p. 11

“In the world of high seriousness too, the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sports, here called apostates, heretics, innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. It sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its, own. The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings.”