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Emerging in play: Collectives, ownership, and everyday rules in a low-income neighborhood in Boston

Play in public space pauses the everyday and allows for fictional collective worlds to emerge. In this article I focus on the unintended ‘frictions’ triggered by these collective fictions. When players inhabit these fantastical worlds, they tend to become more aware of the invisible rules of ownership and property that shape their everyday. This article questions play as an open-ended modality of emergence. I argue that these fictions are ephemeral instances of collective awareness, and by definition preclude sustained forms of collective action to enact long-lasting, structural change; yet they are potentially transformative. I draw on my work as co-founder of Department of Play, a Boston-based interdisciplinary group that works at the intersection of art, urban theory and ethnography. I reflect on the organization and implementation of Boxtopia, a recent play project in a low-income neighborhood of Boston that sits along a ‘development corridor’.