Walking on thin ice, contemporary and historical fascination with force, sport and militarism: how to counteract playing by the rules but with different means.

Sky is clear blue and it seems touching upon all you might find underneath.
Days like these reinforce the notion that force in our lives is not a pervasive element as we could possibly suppose.
Sun hits my face and awake everything surrounding me, colors, faces, movements and moments. There is nothing really that could make me think about the dangers lurking behind the beauty of this real, ordered world. And yet I know, deeply in myself, that all our interactions, perceptions and thoughts are undermined by (or built upon) the idea of force. Force is everywhere, commands respect and we already surrendered to it.

Not what man knows but what man feels concerns art. All else is science.
(Bernard Berenson,1897)

The actual artwork

The actual artwork would be a real size football pitch tiled in ceramic. The act of tiling in itself contains a homelike quality (the tiles used would be more or less the same ones used in bathrooms) which brings back memories of the early way games were played, a much more folkloristic manifestation that has gone somehow lost in the modern development of games and sports, which undoubtedly now rotates around a bigger universe of financial interests and spectacle.
The field would be tiled in a pattern of light and dark green tinted patches, following the designs usually made by the act of cutting grass on pitches.
The lines delimiting the playing surface would be painted in solid white paint, with strong emphasis on playfulness, coming out by the combination of the regular grid formed by the tiles ( multiple elements ) and the usual, typical graphic elements peculiar of football pitches.
The tiles should be ideally at the same height of the grass surface, thus giving continuity but at the same time contrast on a visual level.
Continuity is necessary in order to achieve some sort of surreal feeling that stands at the very core of this work.
Contrast, on the other hand, is deemed necessary to focus spectators’ view and attention in the area commonly defined as “ the pitch”, where the actual action takes place.
Indeed too often this area where the fight takes place comes subordinate to the whole sporting experience, whilst in this case should assume a primary role.
This is, again, where action takes place.
I think this concept in general could be applied to an American Football pitch as well, but for reasons ranging from the actual practicality of the project to the cultural relevance of certain sports in Europe more than others, I came to the conclusion that a football pitch would have been easier for the public to relate to.
Also, considering the scale of the project and the financial budget required, I have decided that for the moment the project will take the form of a scaled architectural model (the tiles used in this case will be the small, regularly shaped ones used for mosaics), for which I have prepared the following statement.

THE ACT OF BOWING intended as kneeling down to examine something

An architectural model compels the viewer to bow in front of it. The change of posture in itself influences and challenges the viewer’s thoughts and analysis of what he is looking at, possibly modifying the perception of the artwork.
Bowing in front of something represent submission, also.
At the same time, though, it is an action that contains all the qualities peculiar of the way children look at things: a yearning for closeness, curiosity and innocence.
Models carry a capacity.
They carry a capacity to draw us into a parallel universe that is bound to happen in between reality and dream. Their roots happen to be anchored to the real present, but their other real territory is otherwise dreamlike. They exceed in what a viewer’s mind wants to do with them. It seems appropriate, after these considerations, to present initially my artwork in this optic and see how events unfold.
Moreover, considering that our sporting tradition is embedded in our society to such an extent that we get “sporting inductions” since very tender age, it might be appropriate to explore concepts in a “toy like” modality.

MATERIAL

The material chosen is ceramic, which happens also to be the very same material used to enhance combat vests’ frontal protection in modern warfare. Body armor has recently started to be issued as a regular piece of equipment to soldiers saving indeed many lives amongst troops.
The ceramic plates are inserted frontally in vests for ballistic protection, in order to protect and reduce damage to vital organs such as lungs, liver, heart and so on.

LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA O VOI CHE ENTRATE (ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE)

OR

LASCIATE OGNI FORZA O VOI CHE ENTRATE? (ABANDON ALL FORCE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE)

The first passage is directly extracted from Dante’s Inferno, the second quote is directly extracted from my own sporting version of the Inferno.
Ideally it should be placed just before the sideline, exactly where athletes make their entrance in to the field before the game starts.
This sentence justifies and is justified directly by the presence of tiles as a playing surface.
Tiles in themselves, as elements, are going to work with their inherent fragility against any kind of forceful attitude of players on the pitch.
They are going to oppose any form of heavy running and contact. Even walking might prove extremely difficult.
Tiles though, when laid down actually lose their material delicacy, and might even be perceived as solid. This is indeed what happens in our houses, we walk without any hesitation on them because we realize that, even if fragile they will sustain our weight. In order to exploit and turn in my favor this common perception I devised a structure running underneath the whole pitch to keep the tiles slightly relieved from the actual ground, thus giving them back the fragility I need to fight a forceful approach to the sport in question.
Basically every tile will lie on four other square mosaic tiles of 2,5 cm each, being in this way raised from the ground by 2 mm, which will be more than enough to make them break at the first attempt to play.
However, tiles are also going to represent the same binding mechanisms on which sports, nationalism and collective identity work. Tiles get a precise and well defined visual identity and legitimization when united to other tiles, they are not made to work alone and acquire some sort of self sufficiency just in group. They are going to both influence and revolution (ideally, on a theoretical level) the way contemporary football is played.
The game, paradoxically and comically to a certain extent, is not going to be anymore between two teams of athletes on a surface but instead between the two teams (individuals) and the surface in itself.
In this way I am elevating a precisely circumscribed (defined) area of terrain (where the action takes place) to the rank of an active element in the game.
This process, somehow, happens in wars too.
Terrain plays a major role in influencing decisions and the outcomes of single confrontations, if not even the actual outcomes of wars.
From heat exhaustion and high temperatures in desert conflicts to the frostbites of arctic landscapes, mountains and muddy fields, Vietnamese jungles etc., battlefield in itself, realistically talking, has always been the first enemy with which an army confronts itself.
This even before considering the actual numbers and military capacity of the opponents.
Terrain is bound to influence strategies, choice of means of movement and even the type of weapons used.


2.10mt x 4mt