Nelly Jovicic

Play: the Foundation of Culture Nelly Jovicic

Play The Foundation of Culture is a compilation of essays dealing with the author's reflections on play, dialogue, boredom, culture of poverty, urban culture, kitsch, myth, pornography, Eros, art, taste, photography, fashion and humor. He asserts that everyone can have leisure, but not everyone can be idle. For him, today everything ends up in photography in order to exist. He claims that art and pornography are essentially in opposition to each other. "Sometimes I fear that we forgot how to laugh," the author complains. His introductory essay, which shares its title with the book, deals with the phenomenon of play and deserves special attention. The author points out that man competes with his own self. Victory is not the utmost meaning of play. He reminds us that children play even before they start to talk...thus it can be said that play precedes culture. As Professor Susnjic says in the foreword of this book, "this work deserves the greatest possible attention not only because of the questions it poses but because of the answers it offers...offers but not imposes."