Rosa Rendl

"I am a pretty whoman & one cant be evrything at once."

-Susan Sontag: "The Volcano Lover" (1992)

Or can one?

Playing is one of the human capacities that prevents the reign of totality in communities. In this capacity, it overlaps with art and lying. Still, scientific game theory is the theory that tries to totalize play and therefore predicts behaviour of groups and masses, their exchange of goods, material ones, immaterial ones, moral ones...

The intimacy of play as well as the emancipatory power of play (and the lie) fall prey to a totalizing predicament of the survival of the superior I, the immediate player, the preferred player, the fuck or get fucked player. Within this rationale, the GOD won't let us be sacrificed, or worse: sacrifice our superior self.

For the famed and lucky Casanova, the jolt of fortune in life is more rooted in the energy a kid has playing pool – accidentally sinking balls – than it is rooted in the geometrical precision of a trained player. Thus Fortunas ways are unpredictable, and giving in to her without resistance or control is a dangerous thing to do.

Today we often laugh and play silently, but we still play – more tactile than rational, more intimate, more controlled yet no less playful. And playing is the one thing that can prevent us from becoming mere instruments to a totality. A totality of transparency, of self-reign and control, of getting fucked.

Any kind of play can help, I suppose.

The game Rosa Rendl is reconstructing is a game of skill that demands smart hands and a fast communication between eyes and hands, hands and eyes. In order to not sink the ball while moving through the maze, we subject ourselves to futile strains, the holes become traps, unlucky traps. Luck comes from filling, finding or enduring a hole/holes/voids. This game lies in playing your control of detail, using your whole body to navigate around a hole-body.

This game of control turns into a frame, to a series of fruit still-life photographs. A frame of order but also of a potential tactile accessibility that surrounds the firm and dry fruits. The fruits formally replace the interior of the game. There are no traps, no luck, no objectives – it’s another plane, another playing field. New rules, new player.

Let it sink in.

- Daphne Ahlers