Crosswords on play

“Under the gaze of the playing child, things become imbued with secret significance”, said Walter Benjamin. This is where Stefano Bartezzaghi challenges Davide Tortorella: you have to write down the name of a game. It is a crossword puzzle to be filled in, a puzzle that talks about play. Games are referred to by names passed down from child to child, according to apparently mysterious reasoning. The crossword grid is a chessboard for language, though it is not the pieces (i.e. the letters) that move, but rather their meaning. The white boxes clamour to be filled in; the black squares remind us a good game doesn’t last long, and they tell us exactly how long. Bartezzaghi and Tortorella’s game combines the most disparate, casual and frivolous elements of our culture. While not being too serious, it wants to tell us at least two things: that nothing is worth it if it is not connected to something else, and that, in the end, the important thing is knowing what game we’re playing.