![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Muntadas-intersecciones.jpg\")
Muntadas, Intersecciones, 1999. Silkscreen. 70.5 x 70 cm<\/p>\n Muntadas, Intersecciones, 1999. Silkscreen. 70.5 x 70 cm<\/p>\n
Baixa a Bola? It means \u2018relax\u2019, or \u2018take it easy\u2019 in Portuguese. But it also has a double meaning\u2019, Spanish-born conceptual and media artist Muntadas explains. \u2018Something like \u2018keep the ball on the ground\u2019. Not up in the air.\u2019 Not like the England team, say.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Muntadas, who hails from the soccer-mad city of Barcelona, the double meaning behind the title of his current exhibition at Galeria Luisa Strina is an important one. Moreover, it\u2019s reflective of the role of football within the work shown in the S\u00e3o Paulo gallery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Born in 1942, Muntadas has variously worked in photography, video, publications, the internet, installations, and urban interventions.<\/p>\n
Football, as seen through the Muntadas eye, is more than just sport. It\u2019s spectacle, and it\u2019s charged with a political edge, too. \u2018Bread and circuses\u2019, Muntadas concludes, during a telephone interview with Sleek, which found the artist on a temporary stopover in his native city. Today the pioneer internet artist lives and works in the US, where he has been based since 1971.<\/p>\n
In the original Latin metonymic, \u2018bread and circuses\u2019 implied a policy of appeasement: public approval achieved through distraction, and the fulfilment of temporary needs. It\u2019s a metaphor that is, of course, apposite for the current World Cup, and its attendant media frenzy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As Luisa Strina shows Muntadas\u2019 soccer-inspired works between 3 July and 2 August, the Arena de S\u00e3o Paulo in the same city will host a string of World Cup fixtures, including the opening game, won by Brazil\u2019s Sele\u00e7\u00e3o of Neymar, Fred, Oscar et al. And yet the ambiguous relationship between sport, society and control was reinforced as police employed tear gas and stun grenades against demonstrators, just hours before the city hosted the World Cup opening ceremony and the first match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While Muntadas confesses to prefer watching club football, rather than the international stage of the World Cup (\u2018and any team so long as Mourinho is not the trainer\u2019), he has addressed the sport on more than one occasion in his 45-year career. The video work \u2018Celebracions\u2019 involved spliced-together footage of players in post-goal ecstasy. Here it was the relationship between the players themselves that was focal point. With Baixa a Bola, the dynamic is that created by the spectators and fans, within the crucible of the stadium. A third factor is now also at play in this relationship, that of the media \u2013 another long-term interest of Muntadas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The stadium is also revisited in the latest exhibition, having previously appeared in the artist\u2019s multimedia Stadium project first shown at the Walter Phillips Art Gallery in 1989, and since exhibited in multiple incarnations. Tellingly, the subtitle to these video montages was \u2018Homage To The Audience\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the stadium\u2019s capacity to host a \u2018spectacularisation ritual\u2019 that has long interested Muntadas. Through the prism of sport, and football in particular, this unique public space distills everyday life and collective violence into a media-friendly series of images and emotions. The result moves beyond simple entertainment to reveal how politics, security, order and mass control are at stake in such situations.<\/p>\n
Muntadas agrees that the return of the World Cup tournament to Latin America for the first time since 1986 is especially significant, and for two reasons. First, the intertwined legacy of sport and politics that has long been found in the continent. Arguably more so than anywhere else, sporting events in Latin America have lent themselves as platforms for political protest, or delivery of a social message. Think of the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, for example, where just days before the games started, tanks and soldiers took to the streets of Mexico City, killing dozens of peaceful protesters and civilians rallying against economic and political suppression. The 1978 World Cup in Argentina is also indivisible from the military junta that had taken power two years previously. By the time the competition kicked off, the military dictatorship had \u2018disappeared\u2019 thousands of citizens, while prisoners at the notorious ESMA concentration camp could apparently hear the roars of the crowd from the nearby River Plate Monumental Stadium.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Muntadas-HOWMUCH.jpg\")
Muntadas, How Much?,\u00a02013.\u00a0inkjet print.\u00a069 x 49.5 cm<\/p>\n
Opposition to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil has also been extensive \u2013 remarkably, even legendary former striker Romario has been vociferous in his criticism of the amount of money spent on the tournament. And it seems that opposition to soccer governing body FIFA and its policies will only grow in the wake of the scandal surrounding the next World Cup but one. The 2022 event is due to take place in Qatar, but the project has already been blighted by revelations of corruption in the bidding procedure, and the lethal use of slave labour to build the required stadiums. Football is, arguably, more political than it has been at any time since the 1970s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The second point raised by Muntadas has particular relevance for the artist\u2019s stadium series. In South America more than anywhere else, the stadium itself has a resonance that reaches far beyond the \u2018mere\u2019 spectacle of the sporting fixture. It was no coincidence that one of the most violent episodes that followed Chile\u2019s military coup of 1973 were the numerous executions that took place in Santiago’s national stadium in the weeks after.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The images in the latest exhibition establish connections between varied treatments of the stadium theme: as an ancient setting for circuses, as a stage for despots\u2019 ceremonies and atrocities, as a site for transforming audiences into consumers.<\/p>\n
Baixa a Bola\u00a0is thus a timely exhibition. And not simply for the fact that it coincides with the latest edition of the World Cup \u2013 Muntadas uses the soccer stadium as a metaphor for the very contemporary collision of politics, sports and media, and the relationship between the mass media and popular culture that is evident as soon as the football fan, however casual, switches over the channel to catch the next game.<\/p>\n
Text by Thomas Lovegrove<\/strong><\/p>\n “Baixa a Bola” is on show from July 3rd until 2nd August 2014 at\u00a0Galeria Luisa Strina<\/a>, Brazil.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n