“Not by any stretch of the imagination.” That is what a friend of mine used to say—and perhaps says it still—whenever something struck him as unreasonable or preposterous. Considering how firmly the expression remained stuck in the layers of my neocortex after all those decades, much struck him that way—and, to this day, much does strike me the wrong way about it. Possibly, I am not flexible enough in my definition of “friendship,” but that one did not endure.
“Not by any stretch of the imagination.” Seriously? I mean, any? It makes me want to object that the imagination is, or can be, more tensile than the minds of those who utter the phrase seem capable of conceiving. And while the characteristically flexuous line of reasoning I am giving over to it might stretch anyone’s patience, elasticity—both literal and metaphoric—is very much at the heart of these idiosyncratic reflections on children’s games and childhood memories, on contemporary art—creative practice “by any stretch of the imagination”—and the role cultural institutions such as museums play in keeping alive memory that, collective though it may be, can be profoundly and confoundedly personal.
It was my encounter with Children’s Games by Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist Francis Alÿs in the summer of 2025 that made me launch into the matter, belatedly as ever, creatively to prolong my experiences, whether they last minutes or extent to more than half a lifetime.
The fact that I am posting this entry on what, in many parts of the world, is commemorated as Mother’s Day, enters into the anfractuous musings that follow.
Continue reading “Leaping at “Elastic”: Resourceful Play, Perpetual Replayfulness, and the Inflexibility of the Museal Dis-playground”
Harry Heuser 