Stadium Spectacle, 2021
Single channel video on loop, 1:05
“Sports chatter has all the characteristics of a political debate. They say what leaders should have done, what they did do, what we would have liked them to do, what happened, and what will happen…such chatter seems therefore the parody of political talk.” - Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality
In Stadium Spectacle, I appropriated footage of an American football game and absented the players by digitally erasing each athlete and using RunwayML to fill in the scene. By removing the spectacle from the televised version, what’s left is the production and the theatre stage. This is made evident by the hollow camera gestures, the superimposed scoreboard on the screen, the crowded stadium, and the audience that gazes upon the empty field.
I was interested in exploring stadiums as a social institution that uphold the industry of sport. The NFL is the most expensive and therefore the most valuable entertainment commodity on TV. If sports entertainment has the power to supplant religion as a global culture, what does that mean about the state of our society? As we become increasingly mediatized and technologized, how has our social infrastructure changed?