Das Los – A Word and Parlour Game, interventions in public spaces
by Maren Richter
 
Das Los is conceived as a game, which back-
ground is based on the thesis of the human as homo ludens/playing human. Friedrich Schiller has in his letters over the aesthetic education
of humans (1795) extract the play instinct as a basic characteristic. In one of the letters he wrote: ”The human is playing only, where he is in the full meaning of the sense human, and he is only there entirely human, where he is play-
ing.“ Both from Schiller mentioned elements are picked up in Das Los: the power of the word and the game. The concept of the project itself refers on a playful access, which is refering not only to the power of a capitalist, global society and their structure of power, but also to the significance of each of us inside of this system: The word Los, linguistic positive connoted, suggest mostly pretended felicity. In the use as suffix however -los describes something missing and marks very often even something which accords not to the social norm: schamlos, mittellos, ahnungslos (shameless, penniless, clueless) ... Without an obvious game instruc-
tion, the viewer is put on his own at this game. And like this animated to think.

Maren Richter,
Kunstraum, Linz, Austria