The football planet_english

FROM JUNE, 7th TO AUGUST, 26th, 2012 MUSEU VALENCIÀ DE LA IL·LUSTRACIÓ I DE LA MODERNITAT - MuVIM

“THE FOOTBALL PLANET”

GUILLEM DE CASTRO, 8 / 46001 VALÈNCIA www.muvim.com

With the title “The Football Planet”, MuVIM (Valencian Museum of Enlightenment and Modernity) opens the summer programme with three exhibitions studying the

FROM JUNE, 7TH TO AUGUST, 26TH, 2012

relationship between the world’s number one sport and

DESIGN · ARCHITECTURE · IDENTITIES

society from different viewpoints. “That’s Football (too)”; “90 minutes. Football and Identity”, and “Cathedrals of Football” focus on the impact this sport has had on forms of expression such as design and architecture, as well as its consideration as an object of worship with the power to define identities.

That’s Football (Too)

Concurrently with Euro 2012, a time when fans gather and national feelings converge around a country’s team, the museum from Valencia uses football, one of the most influential mass phenomena over the last century, to take

With the collaboration of:

an X-ray of contemporary societies.

Cathedrals of Football

90 minutes. Football and Identity

Colaborating in Football Planet:

www.museupilota.com

“Cathedrals of Football” is a wide-ranging, multidisciplinary overview of football stadiums, the settings for one of the most significant mass phenomena of the 20th and 21st century. Both old and new, architecturally cutting-edge and emblematic, the 18 stadiums chosen for this exhibition are spectacular in terms of their design but also their iconic or symbolic value for football lovers worldwide.

Naturally enough, these stadiums from Europe, America, Africa and Asia include Mestalla and Ciutat de València from here in Valencia as well as temples of international football. And, as could not be otherwise, San Mamés, Athletic Club de Bilbao’s stadium, known by supporters for over one-hundred years as “La Catedral”.

“That’s Football (Too)” is the first exhibition to address football as a source of inspiration, process or end result in design. The language and dynamics of football are used to underscore the interrelationship, taking a look at the parallels between the two and bringing football and design a little closer together. It offers three viewpoints of design’s bond with football in three sections: The Professionals, The Youth Academy and The Official Team, also revealing the points of connection between international design and local design.

Born as a game and therefore as a sport football requires outward visual codes in the form of kits and emblems. In other words, images. In consequence, football uses design as a means of optimising all its various elements both technically and visually. From a conceptual viewpoint, design sees football as a language and co-opts elements pertaining to its world in order to come up imaginative solutions.

Football is a symbolic game in which, above and beyond the possession of the ball, national rivalries, social conflicts, genre stereotypes, passions are all disputed – in short, a society’s cultural constructions. To do so, it uses emotional resources that generate identities through a process of initiation seen in the rituals of fandom, which, beyond the spatial boundaries of clubs and stadiums, are reflected in the rites of passage attained in each society. All this enables us to speak of football as a universal culture that has links to the global and the local, the collective and the individual.