Unruly Pitch : Flows and stoppages in football, art and methods

Southern, Jen (2017) Unruly Pitch : Flows and stoppages in football, art and methods. Wi: Journal of Mobile Media, 11 (1). ISSN 1918-2104

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Abstract

Mobility is made in the relations between flows and stoppages. At the center of this paper is an artist’s residency with a mass football game in the north of England that is said to have no rules. A mobile making practice revealed the tension between unruliness and convention in both the game and the research methods. Massumi’s (2002) use of football to reflect on the ongoing and productive relations between the individual and the collective suggests that through the absence of a referee, who stops the game to apply the rules, the game and the town are open for greater collective ownership by participants. Mobile making, and its openness to improvisation, provides researchers with a unique analytical perspective on the game.