The opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was notable for its spectacular deployment of the mass human ornament. In 2022, a second Olympic opening ceremony took place amidst a global pandemic and rising geopolitical tension between China and the US. This time around​ the hot and noisy masses that thrilled American television viewers with their coordinated precision have vanished from the scene of representation. In documentations of the two events: one hot, one cold; one crowded, one empty; one…

The cardboard box has long been regarded as the imaginative plaything par excellence. In 2005, the box was inducted into the Toy Association’s Toy Industry Hall of Fame at the Strong National Museum of play in Rochester, NY—institutionalizing a decades-old association between cardboard and children’s creative play. On the page and onscreen, in museum galleries, schools, toy aisles, and at home, today cardboard occupies a privileged position within children’s material culture where the promises of environmental and STEAM education coalesce.…