Invitation to the Workshop and Blicklabor “I’m fighting!”

Body – Imagination – Play

Project B05 “(Early) Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” by the Siegen-based CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation”

May 28, 2026, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Location: University of Siegen, Herrengarten 3, Room: AH/A 217/18

Drawing on recent films from our research, in this workshop we will explore how interrelationships between a (child’s) body, imagination, and digital (play) objects become manifest in the everyday media practices of families with young children.

The complexity of these relationships is evident, for example, in an observed scene in which a boy lying on a sofa, a few meters away from the screen of a laptop showing a horde of fighters battling one another, is asked what he is doing. The boy’s spontaneous, matter-of-fact answer is: “I’m fighting!” We take the shift of presence (being in two places at once) observable in the camera-ethnographic film as a starting point for further reflection on the relationship between bodies and imagination in digital everyday life. The following observations are significant for the analyses currently ongoing in our research, and will also guide our discussions of the films in this workshop.

Body:

“The social person of the child can no longer be simply traced to their key characteristic of inhabiting and having a developing, physical, and touchable body. […] It makes much more sense to think of and understand (children’s) bodies as materially and sensorially constituted by the cooperative digital media practices that they are always embedded within.”

(Amann, Wiesemann 2026: 35).

Imagination:

Imagination is not a settled concept, centered in the human brain, but rather a technical achievement emerging from the coming together (in play specifically, the collusion) of the mind, body, cultural, and physical environment and objects and systems—not least toys. (cf. Giddings 2024: 134).

Bibliography:

Amann, Klaus and Jutta Wiesemann (2026): Berührung, Körper und smarte Geräte in digitalen Kindheiten. In: Sabine Bollig, Marion Ott, Friederike Schmidt & Anja Tervooren (Hg.): Kindheit als Praxis – Kulturanalytische Zugänge zur alltäglichen Herstellung von Kindheit(en). Beltz Juventa (+ open access)

Giddings, Seth (2024): Toy Theory. Technology and Imagination in Play. The MIT Press.

Participants:

Jochen Lange and Lia Cordes, University of Siegen / Jürgen Streeck, University of Texas at Austin / Lisa Anders, University of Mainz / Klaus Amann

The Workshop will be held in german.