Mathias Poulsen

I just pop in here to ramble a bit, only to meet Andy & his generous, kind offer. I'm immediately brought back to when these exchanges happened all the time on Twitter & we planned so many beautiful things like this. I miss that energy.

Wonderful, Andy. I have truly missed all this. While I've been working with play all along, something has been missing. Even just this kind of planning we used to do on Twitter all the time 🤣

Yes! I'm fairly confident that we will. At least more confident about it than I have for a long time. It's going to happen (🤞). Still many things to figure out, of course 🤣

Maybe we could consider a special issue of Play in Adulthood (just an idea that popped up now 🤣).

And speaking of CounterPlay, how lovely to see Zack sharing this book that somehow emerged from the community back in 2017. It's still very dear to me & I would love to continue this way of working together in the play community.

You can download this great independently created book with essays and thoughts on play & playfulness made by people involved with CounterPlay, which I helped a little on:

counterplay.org/files/PowerO...

Thanks to main editor & festival organizer @mathiaspoulsen.bsky.social

So there we were, a small group of people playing together, rekindling the play energy we all love. And around the fire, we decided there will be more CounterPlay next year in the spring. We don't know more than that yet, but I wrote some reflections here: www.mathiaspoulsen.com/rekindling-c...

It seems to me that CounterPlay might even make more sense today than ever, the need for connecting deeply, for cultivating joyful spaces imbued with a sense of care & love, is only growing. We spend too much time being angry, fearful, despondent, too little time laughing, dreaming, hoping.

And then recently, we had the chance to gather a small group of playful people, friends of CounterPlay & Kolding School of Design, to play together & to explore whether some version of CounterPlay still makes sense now, more than six years after the last festival.

The festival took place in 2019, was supposed to return in 2021, Covid and my PhD got in the way, and I have often thought that, well, maybe it was just a thing of the past. But then people kept reminding me & I fondly remember all these playful encounters. I was not ready to let it go.

I've been completely quiet here, but maybe sharing stories of play is an appropriate reason to start talking?

As some of you know, we used to run CounterPlay, an international play festival with the most wonderful, playful community. It was just meant as a space for playfully exploring play.

Feminist murals in Göttingen 🔥

Ja, det er ret fint. Nogle gange glemmer vi at tjekke, men der er egentlig ok mange steder hvor det er en mulighed. Oftest går det hele helt smertefrit (ja, det gør det jo så selvfølgelig ikke for dem med kroniske smerter).

Tror heldigvis mange steder praktiserer det. Vi har også gjort brug af muligheden på bla Voxhall og NorthSide.

Det er netop sagen - vi er så forblændede af forestillingen om ubetinget individuel frihed og uafhængighed at vi fuldstændig overser solidaritet og det kollektive ansvar vi altid har for hinandens muligheder for at leve gode liv sammen. Før vi indser det kommer vi ingen vegne.

This is an AI-generated image of the Facebook thumbs up icon. Only made of stone, with the thumbs down, and actively crumbling. Oh, and with too many fingers.

Fuck you Facebook. That was the first thought I had when I woke up this morning. Followed by: What ministry is Mark Zuckerberg volunteering to manage for the dictators of the world? Ah, yes. The Ministry of Empowerment. And here's a rager of a blog post on this: www.zephoria.org/thoughts/arc...

Great thread 👇

As I'm slowly becoming friends with our horse (can you ever really own a horse, though?), it encourages me to think in new ways about humans & more-than-humans, troubling my assumptions in so many ways. What an exciting adventure we have embarked on together 🐴

We just bought a horse & it's a whole new world for me. Camilla grew up on horseback, I most certainly did not. Let's just say there's much I need to learn. That said, she's a beautiful, sweet animal, so big, but patient, gentle & playful ❤️🐴

"Det kræver en særlig vulgær økonomisme at kigge på de sidste 20 års udvikling i USA som en anvisning, snarere end en advarsel. Samlet set er det ikke europæerne, der lever i en taberregion."
#dkpol […]

We too! Wouldn't that be something ⛵️ hope you're enjoying the holidays, Alex! Looks like you've had a nice beer journey recently!

Ja, både pladen og det nummer er simpelthen fantastisk. Elsker det. Og absolut én af mine favoritter i den ellers lidt anstrengende kategori "julemusik".

Such a beautiful record! And a moment of peace before the guests arrive...

Had been out & got a spontaneous urge to make a fire. It's a bit cold & windy, but the flames, hot chocolate & blackcurrant rum helps. What a year, huh?

Det lyder enormt spændende og Katrine er skidedygtig 💪❤️

Leg, demokrati og nye verdener Pædagogisk Extrakt · Episode

På Uddannelsesdebatten deltog jeg i en samtale om uddannelse, demokrati, leg & skrammellegepladser. Der var en masse gode spørgsmål & det var en stor fornøjelse. Nu ligger samtalen som podcast via Pædagogisk Extrakt, bla her open.spotify.com/episode/4rKR...

#skolechat #uddannelse

We did some tremendously refreshing (if a little cold) fieldwork in a project last week. I love it & am again reminded that more of my work should take place outdoors. It is always where I feel most alive.

Absolutely. We're resubmitting today so 🤞 it's really an experiment, so let's see how it goes. I feel like there is an urgent need to develop new, more playful ways of writing in academia. It's not so easy, though.

But the peer reviewers seem to appreciate our efforts, and we appreciate theirs, so we try to listen - without turning it into the kind of academic article we're actively trying to escape 🤣 I currently feel I might only make things more confusing 🙈

This is actually more or less what Helle Marie & I are currently dealing with (where I am trying to "get to the point"). Peer reviewers suggested to make it more like a classical academic article, which is exactly what we're deliberately trying to avoid 🤣

What I'm usually after, rather than getting to the point, rather than convergence & stability, is friction, transformation, movement. I'm interested in that which let's us challenge what we think we know, who we think we are becoming, together.