Ten years ago, play as a revolutionary concept captured our imaginations when an infectious spirit of playful experimentation and exuberance animated the anarchist/underground milieu in the pre-Seattle period. Riding this wild and playful energy, we were created seeds of an insurrectionary alternative reality that would one day replace or overthrow the dominant system. Back then, the physical, political, ideological, and imaginal spaces seemed to be opening to us. 

Since then, we’ve suffered more than a few blows, considerably shrinking the climate of possibility in North America into a situation more conservative, defensive, fearful.  Are we on the defensive, just fighting to hang on to whatever sense of validity we have, fighting to keep whatever ground we may have gained, or at least to cut our losses?  Do sobering times require sober solutions, or is a renewed spirit of playful experimentation exactly what we need right now?   

How do we make playful approach more useful or essential when confronting the system or exploring alternatives to it?  How does the ethic, attitude, or practice of play inform, invigorate, animate, deepen, or become one with our politics?  What separates serious play from mere frivolity? How can we make “play” a deeper and wiser and more inclusive concept that ever before? How can, and how do, anti-authoritarians everywhere tap into and thrive on the creative vitality of play?   

In this spirit of experimentation, creativity, performance, spontaneity, transformation, exuberance, conviviality, and giddiness,  we seek articles, accounts and artwork, fiction and non-fiction, on the theory and practice of play in all its forms, as well as essays, articles, and artwork on general themes.

 Deadline: for articles August 1

Send proposals to fe @ fifthestate.org or P.O. Box 201016, Ferndale MI 48220