Mathias Poulsen

Play Activist & Researcher @ Designskolen Kolding

Stuff I thought about recently

  • Recovering from the PhD

    Recovering from the PhD

    It’s been a few weeks (well, more like a month, if we’re counting) since I handed in my PhD thesis at Design School Kolding. The final title is this: The Junk Playground as Agora: Designing for Playful Democratic Frictions The very careful observer may notice that it changed a little from my long-standing working title,…

  • I cry, I hope

    Over the past years, I have become increasingly attentive to my own affective responses to things, all things, every thing. I am in the world, flesh and all, something happens, and I am moved, affected. I don’t know quite how to talk about this (affect theory is still quite puzzling to me), but I try.…

  • There Will Come Soft Rains

    Just as the rain started to fall softly, almost cautiously, after a month of warm, dry weather, I stumbled upon a poem by Sara Teasdale, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (thanks Rikke for sharing!), and while apparently it’s written at the end of WWI in 1918, it feels strikingly timely: There will come soft rains…

  • A Trembling World

    I was visiting a local artist one day, where we talked about the inadequacies of Enlightenment ideals, the myth of the disembodied (yet distinctly male), autonomous individual and all that. She said: “Those ideals, they will soon die. Everything is trembling, almost falling over. Can’t you feel it?” Yes, I replied. I feel it, too.…

  • Doing Democracy Otherwise

    This was not meant to be shared, it was just something I had to get out of my system, to clear my thoughts, but now I put it here (as the joke goes, this is exactly the place to put things to avoid people reading it). It’s hastily written and polemic, no references, no nothing,…

  • A letter to me

    In this journey of transformation and becoming that I have embarked on with the PhD, writing has been one my biggest blessings – and one of my most painful curses. I love writing so much that my world almost falls apart when I suddenly can’t write. Then I spend hours and days just staring at…

  • Democracy & design – fruitful tensions?

    Democracy & design – fruitful tensions?

    It’s funny. When I’m at work, surrounded by skilled designers and talented design students, I feel a little bit like an imposter, because I am not trained as a designer. Then, when I’m among democracy scholars and political scientists, as I have recently been at the ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) workshop “Democratic Assemblage:…

  • Facing Privilege

    I just read Aaron Trammell’s new book, “Repairing Play – A Black Phenomenology“, and it’s a fascinating, compelling and important book that questions a lot of the assumptions about play we have come to take for granted. Trammell makes a stark critique of Huizinga’s proposal of play as a civilizing agent, of play as something…

  • Escaping Western Modernity

    A PhD project is an unruly beast, twisting and turning, taking the novice scholar in many surprising directions (especially, perhaps, if the novice scholar prefers all the twisting and turning over the linear path). As my project has evolved, a suspicion has been growing, making me equal parts uneasy and intrigued. While my design experiments…

  • Becoming a researcher

    Becoming a researcher

    This long and rambling post, or essay, maybe, began in Melbourne, as I was sitting on a bench in the vibrant Fitzroy North neighborhood with a cup of coffee and a beautiful pain au chocolat. Spring had arrived properly, I had been there for 3-4 weeks, and so much had happened already, my head and…