This workshop by Marie R.B. Odgaard investigates playfulness from childhood and to adulthood, with a particular focus on what Marie calls in-between spaces. As part of her own research, Marie will provide images (literal and metaphorical) of playful ways of being in the world. This both from quotidian places of personal experience and memory, from artistic work in the Middle East, and from ethnographic, anthropological and philosophical approaches to the importance of play and playfulness for critique, experimentation and reparation. The workshop will be curious about the in-between and about playfulness as efforts to experiment, to find spaces not defined by external criterion, to test out – and transgress – boundaries, and to sit with uncertainty. This with a particular focus on how artistic practice and activism may allow for such in-between spaces to be amplified or intensified.

The workshop will provide space to play around with the experiences of playfulness in the participants’ own lives and work, to imagine and reflect on when and how in-between spaces for playful reparation might be possible, and to reflect on some of the mechanisms that shut these in-between spaces down. The workshop does not require a specific background in the arts or academia, only an interest in in-between spaces and playfulness in their own lives, study or practice. The workshop will, as point of departure, be conducted in English.

It's free to attend, but we recommend securing a seat on Billetto.

Marie R.B. Odgaard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto through the Carlsberg Foundation’s Internationalisation Fellowship (2023-2025). She has a Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Aarhus University (2022) and has conducted fieldwork on the art scene in Amman, Jordan. Marie is interested in ordinary and extraordinary ethics, playfulness, art & activism, friendship & intimacies, anthropology & philosophy.