Walker Art Center presents
The Game is Not the Thing: Sport and the Moving Image
Aesthetic Athletics
Curated by Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere
Friday, October 18, 2024
7:00 pm
Walker Cinema
A Note from the Curators
Spanning nearly a century of production, the artists in this program devise formalist interventions into sports-media imagery and engage in a diversity of approaches: in-camera techniques like multiple exposure, video synthesis, optical printing, rapid editing, physical manipulations of the film strip like puncturing and scratching, and a variety of animation including drawn, stop-motion, computer, GIF, and machinima.
Some trailblazing films of note: a 1927 cinematic poem about boxing by Charles Dekeukeleire using negative image, a technique rare for the period; a 1957 golf film with holes ritualistically punched into the film stock by destructivist Raphael Montañez Ortiz, making presence out of absence and a visual pun on the game; a 1971 film with computer-generated imagery by groundbreaking media artist Lillian Schwartz; video pioneer Nam June Paik’s commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games; a 1981 masterpiece of stop motion by Takashi Ito creating a recursive rollercoaster journey through a gymnasium from still photographs; and a “Copernican twist in the structure and perception” of a water polo match, with the ball becoming the static center of the 1988 film by Ivan Ladislav Galeta (Le Collectif Jeune Cinéma).
— Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere
Program
Introduction by Dr. Samantha N. Sheppard, cinema and media studies scholar, professor, and author of Sporting Blackness: Race, Embodiment, and Critical Muscle Memory on Screen (2020) and the forthcoming The Basketball Film: A Cultural and Transmedia History.
Ottomar Anschütz, Pferd und Reiter Springen über ein Hindernis (Horse and Rider Jumping Over an Obstacle), 1888, 30 sec.
Proto-cinema motion studies photography “taken as part of a scientific study on behalf of the Prussian War Ministry, in order to help improve their riders’ technique.” (Jared, moviegoings.com)
Charles Dekeukeleire, Combat de Boxe (Boxing Match), 1927, 7:30 min.
A cinematic poem about boxing using negative image — a technique rare for the period.
Ivan Ladislav Galeta, TV Ping Pong, 1978, 2 min.
“The key subject of Ivan Ladislav Galeta’s (1947–2014) early experiments with the new medium of video was the exploration of the ways in which this technology could make the physically impossible seem perceptually real. In this video work, he shot footage of a Ping-Pong game in a studio with three cameras from different angles and presented it using a split screen. The result is an M. C. Escher–esque scene in real time: it preserves the game’s action and temporal continuity but is full of impossible spatial relations among players.” (National Gallery of Art)
Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Golf, 1957, 1:30 min.
A golf film with holes ritualistically punched into the film stock by destructivist Raphael Montañez Ortiz, making presence out of absence and a visual pun on the game.
Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Water Pulu 1869 1896, 1988, 9 min.
“Inspired by the artist's decade-long experience as a water polo player, Water Pulu 1869 1896 takes a polo match as its subject, using optical printing to keep the ball in the absolute centre of the frame as the players orbit around it in a chaotic dance.” (Chris Kennedy, TIFF.net)
Takashi Ito, Spacy, 1981, 10 min.
A masterpiece of stop motion by Takashi Ito creating a recursive rollercoaster journey through a gymnasium from still photographs.
Markus Scherer, O.T., 2013, 4 min.
“O.T. begins as though it were a landscape painting from the nineteenth century. A snow-peaked mountain top rises majestically. The camera’s motionless gaze invites careful observation” (Dokufest)
Lillian Schwartz, Olympiad, 1971, 3 min. — Audience may view with the provided 3D chromadepth glasses
A 1971 film with computer-generated imagery by groundbreaking media artist Lillian Schwartz.
Nam June Paik, Lake Placid ’80, 1980, 4 min.
Video pioneer Nam June Paik’s commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.
Ashley Hans Scheirl and Ursula Pürrer, Super-8 Girl Games, 1985, 3 min.
“In one of the earliest works in their long and fruitful collaboration, Austrian filmmakers Ursula Púrrer and Ashley Hans Scheirl filmed themselves at home. [...] With the whirring of the camera sounding throughout, this short work hints at the endless possibilities of low-budget queer filmmaking.” (Juliet Jacques, Schirn)
Karen Luong, Bubka, 2018, 1 min.
“Sequences of pole vault jumps of Sergey Bubka, in which the projection of the body centers around a verticality.” (Light Cone)
Ana Hušman, Football, 2011, 15 min.
“While investigating the boundaries between commitment and sincere enthusiasm of football commentators and the technique of using their voice, this film reconstructs the goal called the "Hand of God" which Diego Armando Maradona scored during the match between Argentina and England at the World Cup in Mexico 1986.” (AH)
Jon Bois, The Breaking Madden Super Bowl: The Conclusion, 2015, 5 min.
From the SB Nation writer’s Breaking Madden series, made from EA Sports’s hugely popular video game. “I’ve discovered lots of different ways to hack Madden NFL 25 into a thing that no longer resembles football as we know it. I’ve played around with rules, injury settings, all manner of player ratings, player dimensions, and anything else the game’s developers have made available to us.” (JB)
Tintin Cooper, Kiss, 2015, 1 min.
“An athlete kisses a trophy in a never-ending loop, underscoring the absurdity of the romantic gesture against the cold surface of the metal, while mirroring how icons are doomed to repeat their successes and failures through media and memes.” (TC)
Program length: 65 min.
Sensory Note
The film Spacy, which is 20 minutes into the program, contains flickering light. Audience members are welcome to leave the cinema and return. The film is 10 minutes.
Related Screening
On loop in the Bentson Mediatheque Wednesday–Sunday, October 16–20
Guy Kozak, The Game Becomes More Civilized, 2015, 5 min.
Also Available on-demand in the Mediatheque
Pamela Belding, Ritual, 1979, 9 min. Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection
about the curators
ASTRIA SUPARAK’s cross-disciplinary projects address complex and urgent issues made accessible through a popular culture lens, such as science-fiction movies, rock music, and sports. Her work as an artist has been exhibited and performed at the Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and ArtScience Museum, Singapore. She has curated exhibitions, screenings, and performances for the Liverpool Biennial, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Kitchen, and Expo Chicago, as well as for such unconventional spaces as roller-skating rinks, sports bars, and rock clubs. Based in Oakland, California, Suparak is the winner of the 2022 San Francisco Artadia Award.
BRETT KASHMERE is a filmmaker, curator, and writer living in Oakland, California. His creative and scholarly practice reframes dominant narratives about sports and illuminates new perspectives and histories. Kashmere’s films and videos have screened at the BFI London Film Festival, Milano Film Festival, Kassel Documentary Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Museum of Contemporary Photography, UnionDocs, CROSSROADS, and the Wexner Center for the Arts. He is executive director of Canyon Cinema Foundation, founding editor of INCITE Journal of Experimental Media, and co-editor of Craig Baldwin: Avant to Live! Kashmere holds a PhD in film & digital media from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
About the Series
The Game is Not the Thing: Sport and the Moving Image
No time for winners (or losers)! Spanning 13 decades of filmmaking, from pre-cinema to post-internet, guest curators Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere’s 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 “sports film.”
Artists included in series
Haig Aivazian, Santiago Álvarez, Ottomar Anschütz, Pamela Belding, Skip Blumberg, Jon Bois, Torika Bolatagici, Michel Brault, Marcel Carrière, Claude Fournier & Claude Jutra, Mark Bradford, Pedro Burns, Tintin Cooper, Charles Dekeukeleire, William K.L. Dickson, Doplgenger, Thomas A. Edison, Köken Ergun, Nicole Franklin, Bonnie Friedman, Haile Gerima, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Ana Hušman, 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 Montañez 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 Pürrer, Shen Jie (Central News Documentary Film Studio), Martine Syms, Salla Tykkä,Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, dana washington-queen, Zhang Qing
read more
Astria Suparak and Brett Kashmere discuss the series and the paradoxical nature of sports and fandom in their essay on the Walker Reader.
Living Land Acknowledgement
The Walker Cinema and Walker Art Center are located on the contemporary, traditional, and ancestral homelands of the Dakota people. Situated near Bde Maka Ska and Wíta Tópa Bde, or Lake of the Isles, on what was once an expanse of marshland and meadow, this site holds meaning for Dakota, Ojibwe, and Indigenous people from other Native nations, who still live in the community today.
We acknowledge the discrimination and violence inflicted on Indigenous peoples in Minnesota and the Americas, including forced removal from ancestral lands, the deliberate destruction of communities and culture, deceptive treaties, war, and genocide. We recognize that, as a museum in the United States, we have a colonial history and are beneficiaries of this land and its resources. We acknowledge the history of Native displacement that allowed for the founding of the Walker. By remembering this dark past, we recognize its continuing harm in the present and resolve to work toward reconciliation, systemic change, and healing in support of Dakota people and the land itself.
We honor Native people and their relatives, past, present, and future. As a cultural organization, the Walker works toward building relationships with Native communities through artistic and educational programs, curatorial and community partnerships, and the presentation of new work.
About the Walker Art Center
Known for presenting today’s most compelling artists from close to home and around the world, the Walker Art Center features a broad array of contemporary visual arts, music, dance, theater, and moving image works. Ranging from concerts and films to exhibitions and workshops, Walker programs bring us together to examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. The adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States, holds at its center the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen as well as some 60 sculptures on the 19-acre Walker campus.
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