LUCY BROOME: One of the key themes that stood out to me when reading the essays is the playfulness of the production of art, and how that's neglected in art criticism. In reference to the title of the last essay in your collection, “Playing Outside,” how much of art is play?
MITCH SPEED: I started writing “Playing Outside” about ten years ago. My intention was to work through various things that were making me want to leave art altogether. There there was an investment-driven housing crisis in Vancouver, where I was living at the time, and it was crushing the possibility to engage in art in a playful way. There was a literal squeezing out of the capacity for play in artwork and in writing. Play is indistinguishable from the economic concerns of the structure an artist or writer is embedded in because play can really only unfold within free time. When you are working full time and trying to maintain an artistic practice or become a critic there is pressure to get something done in a certain amount of time. That’s something I'm very interested in as a writer.