 When Gadamer argues that “the mystery of festive celebration lies in this suspension of time”, he refers to how festivity suspends work-time. This initiates that “play-time” in which another order of events emerges. It is in such time that an artwork “comes to stand” irrespective of whether it is a painting, drama or symphony. The festive “represents a genuine creation, [for] something drawn from within ourselves takes shape before our eyes in a form that we recognise and experience as a more profound presentation of our own reality” (RB 60). This distances Gadamer from the view that aesthetic experience is a solitary subject’s personal response to an artwork. In the festive—an analogy for the communal dimensions of aesthetic experience—the individual subject comes to stand differently in its relationship to others. Just as the artwork comes to stand in the festival, so too does the artwork bring its spectators to stand as a community: “in the festive the communal spirit that supports us all and transcends each of us individually represents the real power of the festive and indeed the real power of the art work” (RB 63). The festival occasions individuals surpassing their everyday view of themselves as potentially hostile competitors and coming to see themselves as a community formed around a shared interest in what the artwork brings forth. This is an analogy for something more fundamental.