Homo ludens as a force for change

Bigger, more intensive, interactive and entertaining than ever. Tomfoolery, circus, stand up, music, art and science. The Humanist Day on 19 and 20 April will be taken over by the playful person.

The Humanist Day is back on track. This time in a spring version, with numerous events; anyone who gets bored certainly can not blame the organisers – Linköping University in collaboration with the Humanist Foundation (Humaniststiftelsen), Östergötlands Museum, Mediehuset Corren and Linköping Municipality.

The theme this year is the playful person, Homo ludens.

“There is a great power in play. Humour and play are one means of change, one way to influence social development,” says project leader Lars Jonsson, who has a day job as assistant lecturer at the Department for Studies of Social Change and Culture (ISAK).

The basic purpose of the Humanist Day is, of course, to bring the academic world to a broader public, to bring about a meeting between everyday people and research,” he says. But also to create a cultural festival that people talk about:

“Of course we had our eye on Norrköping Culture Night. But we also wanted to go back to how the Humanist Day was originally, in the eighties, full of events in different places around the town, music and theatre and 7 or 8,000 people watching.

The programme is not completely fixed yet but it is mostly finished. It’s a heady mix of cultural activities containing elements of popular science and talks. A lot will already have happened even the day before Sissela Kyle, this year’s Tage Danielsson prize winner, gets up on stage in Wallenbergssalen at 1:00 p.m. Saturday afternoon for the official opening.

On Friday evening 19 April there will be a pre-opening at Linköping Konsert & Kongress with street art in the park, wandering magicians, experimental dance, performance art and even a fire show. An event like this needs a quick-witted Master of Cermonies and the job has been given to stand-up comedian and actor Bianca ”Snubben” Kronlöf. Competition will be provided by Lars Johansson trying to be heard with his pre-opening speech.

“The whole evening will be at a high tempo, so I might have to throw in a little rap. My job will mostly be to promote everything that is happening this day - and to make people feel welcome.

Saturday kicks off by tradition at 9 o'clock with breakfast with the author, this year in Hagdahl’s kitchen in the museum with David Lagercrantz, whose works include the book I am Zlatan.

After that the Humanist Day seriously kicks in. The day will be one continuous intensive exercise in trying to get to as many places as possible. Ideally all at the same time.

There will be 50 or so events in every nook and cranny of the museum, the city library, in Elsas Hus, at Gyllentorget and in various secret spaces that will be open to visitors. In some places play will be mixed with horror, for example in the crypt of Saint Lars Church or in the Curiosity Cabinet.

Saturday is also when science and research will take place. In Wallenbergssalen in Östergötlands Museum, Professor Sverker Sörlin of the Royal Institute of Technology will kick off with a talk about humanistic knowledge in the society of the future. Following that, Professor Mikael Heimann of LiU will lead a discussion on play in connection with child and developmental psychology. To round up the programme of events in Wallenbergssalen, 2012 alumni Melker Becker and Carina Brage will go on stage to further develop the theme “from play to infotainment”.

Parallel to this, in Nya Galleriet there will be a lecture on the playful mother with Lund researcher Jessica Enevold; after that LiU researcher Cecilia Åsberg takes over with a round table discussion about the playful post humanist.

The same afternoon the strains of courtly love will echo around Westmanhallen. Graduate student Johanna Vernqvist from the Department of Culture and Communication will be talking about the poetic love of the Middle Ages. Her department colleague lecturer Robert Eklund and Humanist Day project leader Lars Jonsson, will present the poetry in song form, accompanied by harp and strings.

Then there will be more theatrical events when undergraduate students from the Culture, Society and Media Production bachelor’s programme will talk about their live project Protokoll M5.

In the morning at Westmanhallen, there will also be an event about the environment and the Earth’s resources, and about environmental care as simple fun: “From Hair Shirt to Carnival.” Among those taking part will be Anders Carlsson of the Department of Management and Engineering.

The public is invited to take part in some interactive activities. For example in Konstkoden where Erik Berglund, lecturer at the Department of Computer and Information Science, lets visitors create artistic images by writing computer code. The student society SeKeL, Students for Culture, invites people to take part in intellectual discussions in the foyer.

And there are more academic events, including one at Passagen where Gary Svensson, senior lecturer at the Department of Culture and Communcation, discuss “art that plays” with the artists behind the current exhibition Enter the Wild and at the city library, where an afternoon lecture will look at satirical cartoons.

Even a Humanist Day must end some time, and this one will do so at Nationernas Hus where the main attraction of the evening, stand-up comedian Özz Nujen, promises a bad atmosphere while the comedy troupe Cirkus Kiev from radio station P3 promise the opposite with live radio circus. Behind the programme of satire are a number of former LiU students from Culture, Society and Media Production in Norrköping.

And even more current or former students will be among the performers that evening, including the Norrköping group Drivvedsfolket, who likes to play pop-rock until their fingers bleed. “Music right in your face,” they promise.

More about the Humanist Day and programme in detail (in Swedish)