Access | Fear of Play

Horizon A

Freedom. Freedom is an expression of self, of uninhibitedness. Freedom allows you to do what you want, to respond to your impulses, to pursue your interests. Play. To play is to be free. If you can’t play, you aren’t free. The more free you are, the fewer rules you must obey, and the lighter the punishments for breaking them. Innocence. Innocence, innocence. To be free from fear of danger or harm, free of guilt, unknowing.

Access. Access is a factor of freedom. And of power. The more free you are, the more you can access. This means you have a right to be somewhere, or at least your presence isn’t questioned. Even if it is, you can override any protests and continue to be there without major consequence. The ability to decide where you want to be.

Play. Play is an expression of freedom. Play is an open experience by definition, an activity done for enjoyment rather than practicality. But play is not necessarily innocent, is it? There are players and spectators, winners and losers, strategy, skill, those who play by the rules and those who cheat, those who can afford to play, and those who can’t.

Where is it acceptable to be playful? Where is it frightening? Things can be frightening when they are out of context. This could be a physical context, a cultural context, or a perceived context. People bring their own contexts with them, and these contexts shade their perceptions.

Public. Public spaces are available to everyone, but there is tiered access to the right to be in them. How you are perceived determines your access to public space. If you are a criminalized person, your access to public space is determined by the perceptions of others. We received a call that someone was in the area looking suspicious.

Play in public. There are designated public areas constituted for play. But access to these areas is not always evenly distributed. In some places, there are no designated areas to play. So play must take place in undesignated areas, other public or semi-public or private places. Different contexts. Play can look different in different situations, at different ages. It can look like running, jumping, sitting, looking, hiding, chasing, talking, watching, planning, shouting, sneaking, helping, pretending. It is perceived differently, depending on its context. I thought he had a gun.

Rules. Rules determine what is and is not allowed in a space. But rule-breaking is another expression of freedom. It can become a kind of play. When the same rules apply differently to different people, different kinds of rule-breaking emerge. When rules seem arbitrary, unfair, or selective, they are harder to respect. This is true even if the repercussions for breaking the rules are severe. We must know the risks of the rules we break. When rules run counter to freedom, they must be broken. But what about rules we don’t know we are breaking? I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t realize my tail light was out.

Criminalization. Criminalization takes place when someone is treated as though they are doing something criminal. Whether or not they actually are breaking any rules is irrelevant to their criminalization--when a person is perceived as a criminal, they are being criminalized. Some people are criminalized without committing any crime, others commit crimes with little fear of ever being criminalized. The mental process of criminalization reinforces itself: if you think someone is capable of doing something nefarious, you will not trust them. This produces a feedback loop where your perception influences your assumptions, and your assumptions influence your perception.

Whiteness. As a structure of power, Whiteness allows the greatest degree of criminalization of others. As a white person in a white system, the power of that system exists behind you, to support you. You can accuse someone of seeming to be criminal and your accusation will likely be taken seriously. This is especially effective when the people being accused are not white. 911 what is your emergency?

A group of Black boys are seen by a white lady from her car as they walk down the street together. She thinks they are gang members looking for houses to rob and reports them to police. They are criminalized by her gaze. As Black boys, they must know they are at risk of being criminalized, but also must walk down the street, because that is their mode of transportation. 

Not to mention that walking down the street is an expression of their freedom. By walking down the street, they are determining their own direction and purpose. This can be frightening to people who are not accustomed to seeing such things as black boys determining their own direction and purpose. This can be frightening when the primary way to index a black boy is as a criminal.

Vulnerable. This makes the boys vulnerable. They are not breaking any laws, but their expressions of freedom can be perceived as criminal by outsiders, in a fashion they have very little control over. These heightened stakes can cause the line between criminal and non-criminal activities to waver, or even disappear. 

Playground. A playground is a public space that is designated for children to play. Playgrounds have rules. There can even be rules limiting how old or young someone can be to play in a playground. If you seem too old to be in a playground, you may be perceived as suspicious. Society wants playgrounds to be safe spaces.

Innocence. Innocent is a word used to describe children and people who have not committed any crimes. An innocent person would not knowingly harm another, but they could, accidentally. An innocent person is free to play, unaware of consequences. They are untainted by bad experiences. Under United States law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Safety. Safe means your risk of being harmed is low. A playground has certain safety features, to prevent injury to the children who use it. The ground is often covered in soft material to cushion falls, chains may have coatings to prevent pinching, corners are rounded, fences separate the spaces of play from the less safe reality of the street. But the playground can’t protect children from weather, or gravity, or hot surfaces, or bullies, or parents, or bullets. A playground makes for bad cover.

It is a natural thing for a parent to want to protect their children, to want to shelter them from the roughness of the world, to prepare them slowly for the difficult, complicated, dangerous parts of life. To prolong their innocence. It is a natural thing for a society to want to protect its citizens from danger, to anticipate and prevent problems. It is a natural thing for a child to play, to experiment, to investigate and learn. It is a natural thing for rules to be broken. It is a natural thing for safety to fall away.

Playground (Tamir Rice): The gazebo where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was fatally shot by the police in Cleveland has been dismantled. The structure, which became a makeshift memorial after his death, was moved to a cultural center in Chicago. Credit: Angelo Merendino for The New York Times

Websites: http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/ggbain.03232/
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/us/tamir-rice-cleveland-chicago.html

ABOUT OUR WRITER

Jesse Meredith is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and photographer. He grew up half country and half city (Gilboa, NY and New York City), which sparked his interest in the tangles of ideology, history, and place. His work incorporates lifestyle research with photography, sculpture, text, video and public installation to follow relations of identity, power, and belief, and how they play out in shifting political and cultural climates. The goal of his practice is to highlight and undermine systems that isolate and separate us, and to empower people to address their own biases and (dis)comforts. 

Jesse’s work has been exhibited in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Limassol (Cyprus), and Buenos Aires (Argentina), among other virtual and physical spaces. He has been a resident at ACRE (Steuben WI, 2019) and La Ira De Dios (Buenos Aires AR, 2015). He earned an MFA in photography from SAIC (2018), a BFA from SUNY Purchase (2009), and was awarded the 2018 Weinstein Memorial Fellowship.

Remembering…

Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley Jones
7 Female

Tamir E. Rice
12 Male

Courtney Mathis
12 Male

Michael Ellerbe
12 Male

DeAunta Terrell Farrow
12 Male

Tyre King
13 Male

Ellis Woodland
13 Male

Jimmell Cannon
13 Male

Trevion Davis
13 Male

Shaaliver Douse
14 Male

Cameron Tillman
14 Male

Jermaine Bell
14 Male

Kevin Cooper
14 Male

DeOnté Rawlings
14 Male

Michael Westley
15 Male

Darius Smith
15 Male

Kemonte Cobbs
15 Male

Courtney Jaqueze Williams
15 Male

Brandon McCloud
15 Male

Bobby Walker
15 Male

Dawonne Matthews
15 Male

Stephon Watts
15 Male

Lavon Peete
15 Male

Malcolm Gracia
15 Male

Derrick Louis-Lamar Gaines
15 Male

Bobby Joe Moore III
15 Male

Dakota Bright
15 Male

SEGMENT 148

[week 5] Segment 148 is dedicated to George Floyd.
This segment will be documented every week to reveal the growth and decay over 7 weeks.