Playing the Glossary

In the face of the urgent ecological crises of our time, how can we develop games and glossaries as conceptual, speculative, and material tools?

At its core, a glossary is not a static or closed dictionary but is instead rather alive, always pointing to its own incompleteness. It is what Raymond Williams famously treated in Keywords as a record of an ongoing inquiry rather than a set of fixed definitions, through which he perhaps also showed that a glossary doesn't have to be the appendix of a book but instead can be a work in its own right. It can be a tool for research, thinking, and for sharing. Games – be it video games, card decks, or pen & paper – are storytelling carrier bags, radically multimodal, breaking the magic circle, and one of our, the lecturers', favorite fields of inquiry, artistic tools and materials. In some ways game and glossary are familiar strangers. What if we brought those closer together, playfully?

Playing the Glossary is an open workshop designed to get, through the lens of play, toward a playful, interactive glossary of art and ecology, contributing to an upcoming international and multimodal publication. The seminar is part of EcoSenda, an international ERASMUS cooperation partnership exploring ecological sensibilities in fine art education.

The seminar relies on student-led collaboration; participants will take the lead in scheduling sessions with each other outside seminar meetings.

We offer an optional residency taking place in The Hague (12–18 April 2026). Please see the course catalog for details and registration.