The Game is Not the Thing: Sport and the Moving Image
Curated by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Oct. 11โNov. 8, 2024
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/series/the-game-is-not-the-thing-sport-and-the-moving-image
Artists: Haig Aivazian, Santiago รlvarez, Ottomar Anschรผtz, Pamela Belding, Skip Blumberg, Jon Bois, Torika Bolatagici, Michel Brault, Marcel Carriรจre, Claude Fournier & Claude Jutra, Mark Bradford, Pedro Burns, Tintin Cooper, Charles Dekeukeleire, William K.L. Dickson, Doplgenger, Thomas A. Edison, Kรถken Ergun, Nicole Franklin, Bonnie Friedman, Haile Gerima, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Ana Huลกman, I AM A BOYS CHOIR, Internet, Takashi Ito, Adam Khalil & Adam Piron, Guy Kozak, Iyabo Kwayana, Karen Luong, Louis Malle, Gao Mingyan, Babeth Mondini-VanLoo, Darius Clark Monroe, Antoni Muntadas, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Raphael Montaรฑez Ortiz, Nam June Paik, C.F. Partoon, Sondra Perry, Pied La Biche, Keith Piper, Rachel Rampleman, Macon Reed, Fethi Sahraoui, Markus Scherer, Lillian Schwartz, Ashley Hans Sheirl & Ursula Pรผrrer, Shen Jie (Central News Documentary Film Studio), Martine Syms, Salla Tykkรค, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, dana washington-queen, Zhang Qing
No time for winners (or losers)! Spanning 13 decades of filmmaking, from pre-cinema to post-internet, guest curators Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmereโs six-part screening and performance series challenges the idea that the worlds of sports and art are mutually exclusive. The Game is Not the Thing offers an antidote to commercial documentary and mainstream feature film narratives, looking instead to the creative and critical approaches that artists and amateurs bring to the โsports film.โ
The paradoxical nature of sportโas a site of biopolitical control, collective struggle, and individualized fantasyโmakes it a rich and captivating subject. Our film series, The Game is Not the Thing: Sport and the Moving Image, challenges and expands commonplace understandings of the sports film, charted across a period from pre-cinema to post-internet. As curators, our goal was to bring spectator sports, play, and alternative media and artistsโ cinema into a productive dialogue by focusing on nontraditional forms and counter-narratives rather than commercial documentary and fiction sports filmsโwhich often service hagiographic or nationalistic agendas. We found exceptions and antidotes to the mainstream sports film by looking to nontheatrical cinema, experimental media, fan culture, and social media. Debunking the conventional wisdom that the worlds of sport and art are mutually exclusive, many of the film and media-makers included in the series create from a position immersed in sports culture and critically aware fandom. Engaging a diversity of approaches and perspectives, this series seeks to address some of the unseen political and economic flows of the globalized sports-media complex. What new insights might emerge from the collision of a heterogeneous mix of historical and contemporary sports media objects?
โ Brett Kashmere and Astria Suparak, “No Time for Winners“
TRAILER
Trailer edited by Justin Ayd.
ESSAY
No Time for Winners
By Brett Kashmere and Astria Suparak
Walker Art Center Magazine, Fall 2024
Read the essay with accompanying images at:
https://walkerart.org/magazine/no-time-for-winners
PROGRAMS
Locations: Walker Art Center Cinema and Mediatheque, a free self-select mini-cinema.
Free attendance to anyone wearing a jersey.
1. Power Plays
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/power-plays
Tool for exploitation or arena of resistance? In this screening, themes of nationalism, militarism, racial capitalism, and spectacle converge in the arena of the global sports media complex. Through an interplay of technology, visuality, and public space, these films tee up a critical interrogation of sports as a site for control, struggle, and collective fantasy.
Fri, Oct. 11, 2024, 7pm
Screening program introduced by Brett Kashmere and Astria Suparak
- Fethi Sahraoui, Youthupia: an Algerian Tale, 2019, 7 min
- Keith Piper, The Nationโs Finest, 1990, 7 min.
- Sondra Perry, ITโS IN THE GAME โ17, 2017, 16 min.
- Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, The Same Track, 2022, 5 min.
- Doplgenger, Fragments untitled #6, 2022, 6 min.
- Haig Aivazian, Prometheus, 2019, 23 min.
- Program Length: 57 min.
Wed.โFri., Oct. 9โ11, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Haile Gerima, Hour Glass, 1971, 14 min.
2. World/AntiWorld: On Seeing Double
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/world-antiworld-on-seeing-double-a-lecture-performance-by-haig-aivazian
Beirut-based artist Haig Aivazianโs lecture-performance examines how professional sports, public space, and the law converge with the history and future of surveillance and weapons systems. In a narrative structured around three explosions that occurred outside Franceโs national football stadium in 2015, the artist zooms in on the blurred lines between the street and the stadium. Aivazian describes a world and anti-world where our individual and collective selves exist under the watchful eyes of law, capital, and machines.
Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 7pm
A lecture performance by Haig Aivazian, introduced by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere
Sat.โSun., Oct.12โ13, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Torika Bolatagici, Value Form, 2023, 7 min.
3. Aesthetic Athletics
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/aesthetic-athletics
From boxing, ping-pong, and golf to water polo, football, and tennis, this screening charts a century of formalist interventions into sports-media imagery. Featuring works by pioneering video and media artists such as Nam June Paik and Lillian Schwartz, this program highlights the many different ways that artists make images, from multiple exposure, hand-altered Super 8, and stop-motion animation to video-game graphics and animated GIFs.
Fri, Oct 18, 2024, 7pm
Screening program
- Ottomar Anschรผtz, Pferd und Reiter Springen รผber ein Hindernis (Horse and Rider Jumping Over an Obstacle), 1888, 30 sec.
- Charles Dekeukeleire, Combat de Boxe (Boxing Match), 1927, 7:30 min.
- Ivan Ladislav Galeta, TV Ping Pong, 1978, 2 min.
- Raphael Montaรฑez Ortiz, Golf, 1957, 1:30 min.
- Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Water Pulu 1869 1896, 1988, 9 min.
- Takashi Ito, Spacy, 1981, 10 min.
- Markus Scherer, O.T., 2013, 4 min.
- Lillian Schwartz, Olympiad, 1971, 3 min.
- Nam June Paik, Lake Placid โ80, 1980, 4 min.
- Ashley Hans Scheirl and Ursula Pรผrrer, Super-8 Girl Games, 1985, 3 min.
- Karen Luong, Bubka, 2018, 1 min.
- Ana Huลกman, Football, 2011, 15 min.
- Jon Bois, The Breaking Madden Super Bowl: The Conclusion, 2015, 5 min.
- Tintin Cooper, Kiss, 2015, 1 min.
Wed.โSun., Oct. 16โ20, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Guy Kozak, The Game Becomes More Civilized, 2015, 5 min.
Also Available in the Mediatheque
- Pamela Belding, Ritual, 1979, 9 min.
4. All Eyes on Me
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/all-eyes-on-me
Get pumped! Framed around the fetishized spectacle of the ideal athletic body, this screening of short films looks at the unattainable (for most) muscular form as a subject of athletic introspection. From silent film to social media, these films take on the insidious sexism of sports commentating, examine gendered โaccent gesturesโ in gymnastics, and feature an introspective Arnold Schwarzenegger likening himself to a sculptor with his body as the material. What a flex!
Thu, Oct 24, 2024, 7pm
Screeing program, introduced by Mudonna, mascot of the local Minor League Baseball team St. Paul Saints.
- William K.L. Dickson, Sandow, 1894, 1 min.
- Macon Reed, Gymnasts, 2014, 7 min.
- I AM A BOYS CHOIR, demonstrating the imaginary body (excerpt), 2015, 12 min.
- Mark Bradford, Practice, 2003, 3 min.
- dana washington-queen, Ode to AND1: Notes on the Black Sporting Body, 2020, 4 min.
- Internet, Two Finger Kung Fu, c. 2009, 20 sec.
- Tintin Cooper, Shaka (Dialed In), 2024, 1 min.
- Rachel Rampleman, Bodybuilder Study (Pose, Stroke, Lift, Carry), 2010, 7:30 min.
- Michel Brault, Marcel Carriรจre, Claude Fournier, and Claude Jutra, La lutte (Wrestling), 1961, 27 min. Courtesy National Film Board of Canada.
- Babeth Mondini-VanLoo, Arnold Schwarzenegger: The Art of Bodybuilding, 1977/2019, 8 min.
- Thomas A. Edison, Japanese Acrobats, 1904, 2 min.
Sandow and Japanese Acrobats courtesy Library of Congress, Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division.
Wed.โSun., Oct. 23-27, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Suspension, 2020, 7 min.
- Antoni Muntadas, On Translation: Celebracions, 2009, 10 min.
5. Olympic Efforts
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/olympic-efforts
We are the champions! Looking beyond the nation-building and political motives of global sporting events like the Olympics and the World Cup, this screening of short films covers regional sporting traditions such as Senegalese laamb wrestling, Shaolin martial arts, and the Tour de France. Populist localized events serve as occasions for collective catharsis and cultural expression that allow communities to share values, relations, and histories.
Fri, Nov 1, 2024, 7pm
Screening program
- Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Lamb, 1964, 18 min.
- Iyabo Kwayana, Practice, 2017, 10 min.
- Salla Tykkรค, Giant, 2014, 12 min.
- Santiago รlvarez, Cerro Pelado, 1966, 55 min. Courtesy University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
- Louis Malle, Vive le Tour, 1962, 19 min.
Wed.โSun., Oct. 30โNov. 3, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Nicole Franklin, The Double Dutch Divas!, 2001, 39 min.
- Adam Khalil and Adam Piron, Halpate, 2020, 14 min.
- Kรถken Ergun, I, Soldier, 2005, 7 min.
6. No Goal
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2024/no-goal
Itโs not whether you win or lose, itโs how you play the game. Though sport often reinforces dominant values and hierarchies of power, it is also a source of passion, pleasure, identity, and rebellion. Sometimes, play for the sake of play can also be a radical, disruptive force. Explore the utopian potential of sport: a purposeful purposelessness, a community square, an occasion to stunt, a non-zero-sum game. No winners, no losers, no goals?
Fri, Nov 8, 2024, 7pm
Screening program
- C.F. Partoon, Dundee Police Sports, 1921, 6 min. Courtesy Scotlandโs Moving Image Archive.
- Darius Clark Monroe, South Oxford, 2019, 12:30 min.
- Martine Syms, Capricorn, 2019, 2 min.
- Gao Mingyan, City Golf, 2008, 4 min. Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection.
- Pied La Biche, Refait, 2009, 16 min.
- Skip Blumberg, Summer Ski-Jumping, 1980, 5 min.
- Claude Jutra, The Devilโs Toy, 1966, 15 min. Courtesy National Film Board of Canada.
- Pedro Burns, POV downhill bike run, 2022, 5 min.
- Shen Jie (Central News Documentary Film Studio), Qฤซngqรญ gลซniรกng (Light Cavalry Girls), 1980, 9 min. Courtesy the University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections
Wed.โSun., Nov. 6โ10, 2024
Screening on Loop in the Bentson Mediatheque
- Bonnie Friedman, The Flashettes, 1978, 20 min.
- Zhang Qing, 603 Football Field, 2006, 19 min. Courtesy the artist, KADIST collection.
PRESS
THE POLIS PROJECT, “Astria Suparak On The Role of Sports In Upholding Empires and Systems of Power,” Lisa Kwon, Dec. 12, 2024
The Game is Not the Thing: Sport and the Moving Image exhibits an important breadth of work, from experimental media to nontheatrical cinema, that offers a counternarrative to sports as a wholesale celebration. Take The Nationโs Finest by Keith Piper, a short video mimicking the look of state propaganda to critique the way predominantly white countries use Black bodies to embrace national pride while simultaneously disenfranchising their Black residents. Suparak and Kashmere also bring older films to the surface, such as Charles Dekeukeleireโs 1927 cinematic poem Combat de Boxe, which uses negative images to share a raw perspective of the aesthetics of boxing.
In this regard, sports and arts have much in common: they are both sites of pleasure, passion, and resistance. Suparak and Kashmere show sportโs potential to transcend the shortsighted zero-sum narrative of losers and winners and as a refuge from the worldโs troubles.
I spoke to Suparak about the counter-narratives from artists sheโs found through her curation work, the Western fascination for utopian narratives, and how sports and the arts are not mutually exclusive sources of inquiry and criticism of our political and cultural spheres.
RELATED
- The Game is Not the Thing curated film & performance series
- EXPANDING THE FIELD: Sports & Politics Discussion Series
- INCITE Journal of Experimental Media: SPORTS publication
- A SELECTIVE GUIDE TO SPORTS IN EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA
- A NON-ZERO-SUM GAME series of exhibitions, film programs, commissioned projects, and events
Astria Suparak 