"Seitenwechsel"

by Boris Nieslony 2008

"I could not make out any prisoners" Berti Vogts
on the occasion of the 11th Worldcup in Argentina
June 1st until 25th, 1978



It was warm and beautiful days during the "Seitenwechsel" ("Changeover") 

All 4 years mugs eruptive and fever like the Agon all nations of the world, the soccer WM, like an outstanding 
nature spectacle or -catastrophe. All 4 years artists of all various alignments dock themselves to the 
"Playing with what plays with us" (P. Sloterdijk).

The enforced need for representation in the arts and in various mass-cultural sports sandbags to ever shorter apparitions. 

European Masterships, Super-Champions League etc. The "Event" is the copula, the competence of the "Total Staging". 
Never before, the arts and soccer symbioticized as much as during the WM, in 2006, and have never appeared that synenergetic. 

What's playing there? What shows itself off - that event like in its periodical appearance? 

It's the cyclical "world subduing powers of soccer", that makes all cultural, political and social rules palpitate. 

1. Rule: The one, understanding what and how things switch and change in soccer, is osmotically informed about 
any other transition and change in any field of society. (Theweleit 2004:116)



Is "Seitenwechsel" possible at all?

The phenomena that appear here as a complex sedimentation and play "multiple layered-rolls", are in the 
first place personal emotions, but furthermore collective "emotions in public spaces", lead by the symbolizing 
and the identification with the elites. Various socio-cultural elites developed their own "figures of 
representation", their own sports, for example tennis, "Formel 1" or golf. 

But we discuss here the intercultural symbol soccer that enables worldwide the affiliation to a clearly (and 
distinctively) separated identification. Inclusive is the liberation of personal anankastia and the conveyance 
into accepted, national representation. And thus belongs the sedimentation of influence via the global imaginatory 
industries (capital and consume) onto the imaginary, private worlds of each and everyone. 

Already in the Greek society, the emotional need of each individual human being for "acceptance by others" is 
defined and characterized with the term "thymos" (life-force). Megalothymia is the need and desire for be accepted 
as predominant by others. Thymos can be seen as the basic mood in the whole field of existence of a human being. 
It is oppositinary as a non eternal, mortal force in opposition to the eternal, immortal forces psyche and nous. 
Any ego as any identification is non existent in those times. 

The Greek agora and the old Olympic games can be seen as the beginning of the "emotionalization of the public space", 
as the early form of any (popular) mass culture. Thus, over the next decades, new forms of political, economical and 
cultural public got developed and enforced. 

By the means of the game, here exactly defined by the cultural anthropologist Johann Huizinger during his examination 
of the Homo Ludens: 

"A game is the voluntary action or engagement, that is performed within certain limits of space and time, according 
to accepted but definitely obligatory rules; that has it's goal in itself and is accompanied by the feelings of tension 
and joy and the consciousness of "being different" then any normal life situation."

By the means of the sweet stakes, agon in Greece, a medium of identification and connection, of oppression and selection 
was found, that was a strong educational means and formed and defined society. 

The respectively symbolic imaginated world is integrated in the local field of living and this is a lifesaving measure 
and participation. 


"Soccer is not a question of life and death, soccer is
much more and much more important"


2nd Rule: "The Gateway to the World"
Soccer is a strongly connoted symbol for community and ecstasy around the world. Fairness and team spirit shall not 
only be originated via sports, but shall lead to an understanding between countries and nations, especially between 
rich and poor. Responsible for development coordination, the Landrat Dr. Josef Stockinger has a special present along 
with the EURO 2008. "Fair sewn" leather soccer balls. Seweresses in Pakistan sew 32 pieces with more then 700 stitches 
to form the final soccer ball. "Fair-trade soccer balls" guarantee a just salary for the seweresses, and additionally 
5 Euros per soccer ball are donated to the campaign "Soccer for Street kids" from "One Youth One World", said Landrat 
Dr. Stockinger. 

3 rd Rule: 
Ball mastery and body mastery. Within this and especially via this "game", the "fight(ing) games" (martial arts), 
deriving from all ancient periods of time, transform into socially dominating representations and national 
identifications. "Slick use and playings of the soccer fields, ball control and cooperative behaviour serving as 
the social matrix".

This can be exemplary understood, by taking the history of German soccer as a well researched example. 
The Prussian grinders and planers, the "Blutgrätschen" from decades ago, are now replaced since the 1970ies by 
genius ball wizards and "pop stars" à la Netzer and a generation later by ultimatively flexible team players 
à la Ballack, that are able to instantly "read" a game and thus are able to deliver anytime any quantum of surprises, 
that debalances immediately any well-balanced and well calculated system of the opponent." (Theweleit) 


The soccer field as a field of projection. Cult site - stadium - arena - screen - desktop

"In the middle ages, soccer was played in England, having two villages trying to expedite the soccer ball into 
the opponent's town gate. Everything was allowed, and serious injuries were normal. The "long filed" was always 
defined to be the area between the two villages, even when this included some kilometres distance. This games were 
incredibly brutal and were banned by church and crown several times, this leading to a continuous decrease of their 
importance from the industrial revolution at the beginning of the 19th century on" (Wikipedia)

The roman arena, declared to serve as a world symbol by Seneca, served as the inspiration. The cornered gladiator 
has to publically show the process of dying ("Morituri Salutant"). The place and time of truth. ancient Roman 
reality without any metaphysics of defeat, without silver or bronze medals. The loser - the corpse - there. 

"Obvious to see, that in (many cultures) in traditional games not only balls were rolling, but proverbial and for 
real heads, this is shown by the modern business "practices" we find in the soccer management and as well proven 
by ancient "game" practices. The ball, used by the Aztecs, to quote one example, consisted either of rubber or a 
leather wrapped skull. The rituals were blood and the winner (not the loser!) of Aztecan ballgames were donated 
to the Gods. Referring to the "Popol Vuh*, more and more researchers come to the conclusion, that the winning teams 
were sacrificed, to open access to the pantheon and to be honoured by transforming into gods themselves." 
(Chr. Oppermann)

The Greek stadium as a screen for projection, where beautiful male human bodies were immortalized, serving as 
godly metaphors, after the excessively cruel winner ceremonies. 

And serving as a different variation, the roman arena, the roman "metaphysics of the standing", the vertically 
pertinacious and the ones, that got carried out horizontal. within the modern framework, other forms of the 
cooperative "fight(ing) games" derived. (Development of the mass culture out of the ritually connoted collective 
movements) the new forms integrate again the "fight(ing) games" of the populus into representations of political 
and social systems. Stadia today serve as communication centres, where tribal like dispositions originate and 
get advocated, they are the "wall street of the social" (Dirk Schümer) 

The recovery on the matrix, primary leeway and not warzones, the "how shall man name him", from the godlike, 
half Greece populating sculptures of the "dying heroes, the statue" to the beautiful cult athletes over to the 
technically versed, computer stylized and advertisement-littered media star.

The athlete, artificially in the avocation of the "fight(ing) (fame) game", was and is till today chained to 
the acquisition and adoption, the performing of a special lifestyle and the according special rules going 
along with it. It is the athletes that provide the symbolizing and facilitate organizations like the FIFA. 



"We have all fighting spirits in our bones and
that represents the sedimentation of 5000 years"
(Chinese Athlete) 

When the introduction of the second place(d) alike the third place(d) serves as a humanisation of the "fight(ing)games", 
the violations of a rule (by first setting up temporary rules) can be seen as a further maceration of the tournamental 
structures. 
(20 to 30 players per team)
Sobriety does not take any lead in front of the global symbol of "The Modern" - the orb.

Soccer - symbol for community and ecstasy, the realizable dream of the alternative "way of life"
"Without war, sports can be defined as the ambit, where nations cognize each other." A historic quote by the 
authoritarian president Franjo Trudjman. He was proven right even during his lifetime: WM 1999, when the players 
with the chessboard tricots scored the third place and became "eternally" soccer history, jubilated by the press. 
For Croatia it was the "coronation" on the way to its independence, after all warlike confrontations on their own 
territory with the revolting Serbs that left their bloody traces. (Boris Raseta).

Sports rupture all limitations of physical capacities and sets collective desires and myths free. The arts critically 
question these phenomena and transform them into social and philosophical questionnaires. (I can't remember who said that)



"Some visit a museum, others an
arena and some both" 
Olaf Metzel, Artist

What do self-identifying, multilayered motivated spectators see in (to) a social and cultural "fight(ing) game"? 
Soccer as ephemera, performative and communicative praxis of conduction. Minimal movements, specific capacities, 
passes, hooks, twists performed on minimal space, overlooked and yet crucial turning points within a process, 
capacities, that are game determining. 

To this end Lothar Müller: Actually Theweleit is providing illuminating 
annexations - whether by means of the typos of the "Klopper" or the "German virtues" or whether he relates via 
the "obdurate, bragging, still anti-Semitic and self-opinionated after war German" or whether he draws political 
teachings and conclusions deriving from his observations of the Oranje-Team around Johann Cruyff: "Flat hierarchies 
and team spirit inspite of authoritarian leaders, egalitarian short-pass games instead of classical middle-field 
directing, attaching to the pop culture."

What connects these short explanations about soccer and it's basics to the arts, in this case, the visual arts? 
All phenomena in the history of soccer since it's beginnings serving as a mass medial praxis are nearly one to 
one transfusable onto the arts as a mass culture with it's market-, communication- and representational techniques 
and - strategies. The term "connecting capabilities" defines this medial disclosure. 
There is nothing to add to that, apart from maybe the glance: which athlete and which art star are self suitable 
and maybe one recognized via similar techniques for example applied by a "sovereign painter" like Lüppertz and 
Günther Netzer, or the statement: Zinedine Zindane's art of playing is an example for a digital matrix field. 
The glance directed onto style and aesthetic. 

Not to be repeated, but basically present are the long litanies of the critics of mass culture, economic praxis, 
consumisms, the elites. Statable is, that 2500 years of praxis in the physical view of humans, 2500 years of 
the most variable social designs are depicted and makes itself comfortable within the construct of art as an 
elite with similar techniques of symbolizations. The continuous deconstruction of the statues, this like ever 
anew, to establish something different and deconstruct and destroy again, is the equivalent to the demontage 
of the tin gods - Sepp Maier, Litbarski, etc 
The ultimate "Rules-game"



Seitenwechsel is not at all possible, soccer and
the arts already collapsed into each other 

Something fascinating can be perceived here: when a star collapses, the phenomenon of "Schalenbrennen" ("shell 
oxyacetylene cuttings) takes place, and this excites more energy then any "nucleus oxyacetylene cuttings", 
the star is outshining into the vastness. The ultimate event. 
Is something comparable happening right now? 
What is illuminated and illustrated in this light are contextual sightings onto the operating phenomena within 
a well defined cosmos of questionnaires: how do the social, political and cultural movements, forces, the epiphany, 
the socio-forms and organisations, that the transformed self-image and self-understanding - to BE in the world 
- that presents itself as a depiction in a stagnant-fluctuating NOW and more important - RE-presents. 

Why do I have this relationship with the arts and soccer and not any other or none? 

A structural examination how far the "placed" works in a contextual context of the project "Seitenwechsel" 
parallel the developments of the mass-sports, the technical acquisitions, the communication-technologies, 
the cultural and political event productions etc is not highlightable here. 
The question is: how the mental, body scientific and physicality connected movements are inscribed into the 
various human being's matrix, that they become paradigmatic settings and serve as parameterizations (emergences) 
on the various socio-political playing fields (playing field "world").


The stadium, the playing field 

° Critical contemplations of the stadia, the arena by Antoni Muntadas refer to the social and political 
potentiality of the multipurpose building. Architectonical work to do is plenty until this potential is 
or would be completely exhausted. We can already find at the FC St. Pauli dimensions, where the fans, 
alike in medieval cathedrals, are warranted with life centrings, community and legal protection within 
its murals. 


Player - athlete - gladiator - model 

° M.I.E.L. Two screenings are more then striking: idiosyncrasies realized within the play station/playing 
field are - like in any real soccer-game - arbitrative. Technique, countenance of the more or less 
preparated Tipp-Kick Player, own body composure, radiation of bluff and delay, timing and 2nd in the eyes - 
" I kill you!", closed down into an amicable micro-emotion, become therefore the basic emotional structures 
of the athlete, the model-gladiator set within the historical frame "to participate is everything" 

° The bunker terminated, the labyrinthic stray bullet like one wearing a gasmask, irony serving as a beta-blocker

° The clone-elf, the cloned star and the model, the in china normed and painted decorated; the one living 
a deprived existence in the hand of the fans within a cloned fan-institution as a more then thousand yearlong 
relict of self-deception whilst constant worshipping. 


The Team

° As if the time terminating and enforcing the soccer into the modern times rules would have never existed, 
over boarding teams play themselves off on the "plaza" of the FIFA arena. 200 Reds and Blue, transnational 
in colour crazy tricots, with passports, that remind of sabotage, neither the flags nor banners forgotten. 
Temporary placements in capsules as regulated needs are optionally available. 
The Blue won!


The Ball

° The ball hidden under the lawn. This sentence is enough. Taking a broad general "overview" of the playfield, 
the sensation originates, that the ceiling should get dragged down about a meter, to buckle and to stooping 
own preferred. 


The Game

° When competence and coincidence as a game lead to a calculus without end, when singing helps, the singing 
drive target-orientated. Dreamlike they easily carry the ball into the goal. Important sight onto the ritual 
of the "joining in". So far a communication-technology, not that much taken into account. 


The spectators, fans, tricots

° "Bringing the action to the audience" was to be read.
° The fan with the weak heart that did his time during a strong game, the ultimate fan, that does not stop 
at nothing, not even murder, the final act of a player at his non-excusable last act (own goal) leading up 
to wars between the various football nations with each other. 
These are no simulations. The tight bondage between war technologies and art are (nearly) consistently deductable. 
But, which artists lost their lives, because may the choice of colours was wrong, the choice of the material 
in the eye of the spectator horribly bruising, the tongue in the bronze muzzle of the horse lackadaisically 
forgotten, that this choice was terminable, the last of the artist? Maybe a wish? Well, it did happen, and 
easily to arrange in any simulation, an art-problem - the last shot onto the goal - the final act. 


The projection, the motivation

° Asked by Diane O'Donoghue and Elisabeth von Samsonow: "Is a projection a 3-dimensional thing? (During a 
lecture 2004 in Bremen). That project t.b.c. is visualizing this vividly, based on single person and with 
the equipment nearly magical capacities of infiltration and manipulation. Where is the line between simulation 
and magic? Does a framed by the pattern of a landscape become a sculpture? And what does the artist mean 
with the question: Are we not all part of the (matrix) game, which is euphonizing nearly all parts of the 
population nowadays? To think this as the strong and daily vandalism exposed sculpture?


The fascination of soccer, not only to explain, but to intensify. The impact out of the context defined 
as "The Beauty" causes the word to die, makes numb.  


and
"... at least the turf represents maybe one of the last projectory acreages for utopian thinking." (Theweleit) 

It was warm and sunny days in Hannover 2006. The power of the fans canalized. 


*Popol Vuh ("Ratsbuch"), in the modern Quiché-writing Popol Wuj, is the holy book of the Quiché-Maya in 
Central America. It deals with all mythological and historic aspects of this
tribe. One translation among others is published with the title "The Book of Knowledge".

The yukatecic word for rubber and at the same time for blood, which is the copula for all areas of Mayan 
life, is "k'ik". Therefore, the (soccer) ball represents the life-force and the blood of the ancestors, 
and is seen as the copula between life and death. This explains why the ballgame is connoted and connected 
to Xibalbá (the underworld).  


Literature:
° Bredekamp, Horst. Fußball als letztes Gesamtkunstwerk
° Elias, Norbert. Der Fußballsport im Prozess der Zivilisation 
° Herzog, Markwart. Fußball als Kulturphänomen: Kunst - Kult - Kommerz 
° Krankenhagen, Stefan. Aus der Halbdistanz
° Schmidt-Lauber, Symbol, Ritual und Mythos im Fußball: Zur FANomenologie des Hamburger Stadtteilvereins FC St. Pauli
° Sloterdijk, Peter. Zorn und Zeit
° Theweleit, Klaus. "Tor zur Welt"
° http://www.goethe.de/wis/bib/prj/hmb/fus/de1480292.htm 


Text: Boris Nieslony 
Translation: Sibyll Kalff, November 2008