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Casco Issues
Issue XII: Generous Structures

Issue 12: September 2011
With Contributions by Zayne Armstrong, Ei Arakawa, Bob Black, Augusto Boal, Ruth Buchanan, Binna Choi, common room, Paul Elliman, ifau & Jesko Fezer, Zachary Formwalt, Beatrice Gibson with Will Holder and John Tilbury, Kleines postfordistisches Drama, Mattin, Hwayeon Nam, Merijn Oudenampsen, Nam June Paik, Anne Querrien, David Reinfurt, Margit Rosen, Katerina Seda, Axel Wieder 
Edited by Binna Choi and Axel Wieder 
Design by Julia Born and Laurenz Brunner in collaboration with Sam de Groot 
Co-published by Casco, Utrecht and Sternberg Press, Berlin 2011 
Casco Issues is a magazine published by Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory, which explores recurring issues that emerge from Casco’s programme. The twelfth edition of Casco Issues, Generous Structures, is a playful enquiry into ‘playfulness’ as a value in critical cultural practice. It positions alternative notions of playing against the grain of neoliberal ideologies of ‘lifelong learning’ and ‘work as play’. 
By taking the idea of playing and the metaphor of the game as a starting point, the publication addresses what might be called a ‘ludic turn’ – the impact of the notion of play and gaming methods in various research fields and cultural work. Most prominent in the Internet industries and interactive media landscapes, but also in theoretical reflections, historical research, and the work of artists and designers, we are experiencing an interest in play as an educational tool or model for participation. However, with the conscious exception of the game per se, the publication attempts to trace its current impact and critical capacity, and explores various notions as well as concrete modes of play including activities such as learning, sharing and group work, in relation to space, art and design. It is driven from a methodological interest in the structure of playing, in its dialectics of rules and possibilities, planning and non-planning, collectivity and individuality. A game, in this sense, is not only characterised by its rules – or, on the contrary, by the liberty of the playing individuals – but is rather a construction of conscious interaction, application and transgression.

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Casco Issues
Issue XI: An Ambiguous Case

Issue No. 11, 2008 
With contributions by Babak Afrassiabi en Nasrin Tabatabai (Pages), Gregory Bateson, Gregg Bordowitz, Judith Hopf, Jutta Koether, Runo Lagomarsino, Agency (Kobe Matthys), Metahaven, The Otolith Group, Emily Pethick, Marina Vishmidt and Tanja Widmann  
Edited by Emily Pethick, Marina Vishmidt en Tanja Widmann  
Design by Julia Born & Laurenz Brunner  
Co-published by Casco and Episode Publishers, 2008 
179 pages, English 
Titled ‘An Ambiguous Case’, Issue XI has been edited by Emily Pethick, Marina Vishmidt and Tanja Widmann, and was developed through the process of a conversation on the subject of openness. This inquiry led into a discussion around a number of related terms – criticality, fractures, ambivalence, ambiguity, undecidability and conflict, to name a few – as well as distinctions between recognising openness as a condition, and practising, or doing, openness. The editors opened this question out to a number of artists and designers, including Babak Afrassiabi and Nasrin Tabatabai (Pages), Gregory Bateson, Gregg Bordowitz, Judith Hopf, Jutta Koether, Runo Lagomarsino, Agency (Kobe Matthys), Metahaven, and The Otolith Group.  
The publication also includes a conversation between the editors and two ‘Metalogues’ by British anthropologist & sociologist Gregory Bateson; conversational speech acts that could be seen as creating a form of openness, producing moments of conflict, suspension and indeterminacy.

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