Experiments With Football

‘Refait’ is a remake of the of the football match between France and Germany that took place in Sevilla during the 1982 FIFA World Cup. In June 2009 French collective Pied la Biche was invited by the urban interventionists of KompleXKapharnaüM (brilliant name) to replay the last 15 minutes of that match in Villeurbanne, a city close to Lyon. Aim of the project was to reproduce the drama of a sport event in a completely different context — the urban environment. Each aspect of the original match was reproduced: players, positions, gestures, intensity, drama. On the other hand, each sequence of the game took place in one or several locations in Villeurbanne, shifting the traditional game area into the urban environment.

“One year before the World Cup, we decided to remake the last 15 minutes of the ’82 finale game for several reasons. First, this match still remains in the memory of all the people who could watch it in 1982. Most of the people we met told us about the tension they had felt watching the game. Secondly, the city of Villeurbanne offers different types of landscapes. As architects, we rapidly pointed out the wealth of such a field.”

‘Refait’ is part of a trilogy. The second episode of the trilogy is a documentary of an event that was organized during the Biennial for Contemporary Art in Lyon: a three sided footbal tournament (see video above). Inspired by the ideas of Danish artist Asger Jorn, founder of the Situationist International movement and former CoBrA member, Pied la Biche organized a real football tournament, but on a hexagonal field with three teams playing at the same time. The third episode of ‘Refait’ is a video of an amateur football game on the country side during a sunny day. “We wanted to show all that happens around the game: the training time, the coach speech, the audience. We had several cameras and we made a special effort on the sound recording”, the makers explain. Click here to watch that video!