Tongues of Stone: Making Space Speak… and again, and again

For Johannes Huizinga, all culture "bears the character of play," suggesting that the play-element is both a delight and a burden. Performance, like play, is comprised of a complex set of systems that embrace aesthetic displays, daily encounters, intellectual endeavors, institutionalization, and warfare. The play of performance, therefore, operates between the poles of entertainment and acts that are deadly serious. As Jon McKenzie states, we "perform or else."