Anti-Racism World Cup 2010
July 16-18

Donegal Celtic FC
Suffolk Road
Belfast Northern Ireland BT17

“For the last three years teams have traveled from across the world to play against teams from various ethnic minority groups and from local communities in Belfast and across Ireland.

Last years tournament involved over 500 local people and 100 international guests and was a showcase for Anti-Racism against a backdrop of an upsurge of racist attacks in Belfast.

This year we intend to bring more teams to Belfast, including for the first time a Palestinian youth team, and we intend to make the tournament the largest anti-racist event in Ireland in 2010.”

[Text and graphic from ARWC website. Thanks to Andy Hudson in northern England. Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a World Cup soccer and social media project. ]

On June 24th 2010, the all-American sneaker Keds announced its sponsorship of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In celebration of this sponsorship, Keds launch of the KedsWhitney Collection that will feature designs by celebrated conceptual artist Jenny Holzer printed on the iconic Champion® style shoe.

Holzer, who has exhibited work during the famed Whitney Biennial, is known for using words and political phrases in a range of media such as LED signs, stone benches, T-shirts and grand-scale light projections in public spaces. For the KedsWhitney Collection, she has created a fresh take on the Keds classic Champion® silhouette by drawing inspiration from her own designs. Jenny Holzer’s limited-edition styles will feature a phrase from one of her signature text series, Survival: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT applied to the Champion®, expected to retail in the range of $70 – $75 per pair. The shoes will be available at select Bloomingdale’s stores nationwide and online. The good part: All Keds’ profits from Jenny Holzer’s line will directly benefit the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Usually a skeptic of corporate intentions behind cause-related marketing, it was odd to find myself raving in full support about this particular project. Most likely my admiration for Holzer’s work and the many visits to the Whitney have naturally made me an easy target for this particular product. Although I have never bought into any other cause-related marketing campaign before, I truly believe in this unique and utterly brilliant collaboration.

Given the three strong corporate players, this project has the potential to reach new audiences, promote Holzer’s work, generate funding for the Whitney Museum- and, most importantly, bring art into people’s everyday lives. I also enjoy the fact that having dozens of people boasting punchy Holzer phrases across the U.S.  fits neatly into Holzer’s overall artistic intent.

Keds will continue the collection in the Fall with artists Laura Owen and Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner, also two Whitney Biennialists. A portion of the sale profits will also go to the Whitney Museum. The more I think about the project, the more I like it. So, mark your calendars for the release on July 8th,2010 —I have a feeling these sneakers are going to be museum-worthy.

[Meanwhile, halfway across the globe:]

US Social Forum 2010

Thursday, June 23
Presentation: World Cup, Sports and Social Justice
Cobo Hall
Detroit, Michigan USA

* Dave Zirin – Author “A People’s History of Sports in the U.S.” The Edge of Sports
* Favianna Rodriguez – Presente.org‘s “Move the Game”
* LIVE from South Africa via Skype – Trevor Ngwane, Organizer for the Anti-Privatisation Forum and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee
* moderator: Davey D

“The World Cup will is now playing live and a billion people are watching. Join us to learn about sports as a dynamic site of resistance, popular expression and community transformation.

Massive workers’ strikes, brutal sweeps of the homeless, more than 20 assassinations of whistle blowers: one version of the World Cup is now playing live on TV and more than a billion people are watching.

While the U.S. Left has largely dismissed sports as a distraction from serious organizing and the pursuit of social justice, across the globe sports are seen as a crucial site of both struggle and transformation – as a vehicle for popular expression and resistance.

In recent weeks, activists across the U.S. have been rallying wherever the Arizona Diamondbacks play to protest the racist immigration law SB 1070, demanding that Major League Baseball “move the game” – the 2011 All Star Game slated to be played in Phoenix. In an unprecedented and highly-publicized move, the NBA’s Phoenix Suns wore “Los Suns” jerseys to draw attention to the unjust legislation.

Less well-known are the community coalitions across the country that work every day to challenge public financing of corporate-owned stadiums, replace racist team mascots, and foster non-sexist practices by school districts and personnel. Sports also provide organizers with huge opportunities to build bridges “beyond the choir” and impact the dominant messages of the day.

Patrick Bond from the Center Civil Society in Durban has said: “Anytime you have [a] billion people watching, that’s called leverage.”

Join us for this inspiring session on the intersections of sports, social justice and community transformation.”

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Thanks to HP on site in Detroit for the tip!]

[With thanks to A.P. for the tip.]

Love Football | Hate Poverty: Ranking the World Cup 2010 teams based on social justice indicators

Who Should I Cheer For?

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Graphic: screen grab of comparison of  Group H teams Portugal and its former colony Brazil.]

apexart
291 Church Street
New York, New York

June 10 – July 11
Men With Balls: The Art of the 2010 World Cup
Curated by Simon Critchley

Including work by artists Miguel Calderon • Mark Leckey • Hellmuth Costard Maria Marshall • Liam Gillick • Santo Tolone • Douglas Gordon and Uri Tzaig • Philippe Parreno
memorabilia from Roger Bennett • Bill Shankly
match results read by Mark E. Smith

“The FIFA World Cup is the most important and widely watched sporting event in the world. The germinal idea for this exhibition is very simple: to create the perfect football environment, a sort of mini-soccer paradise at apexart for watching games. Around the games themselves, there will be talks, events, and a series of works, objects, and activities that will expand the spectacle into a more conceptual and sensual rumination on the meaning and significance of football/soccer.

The World Cup is a spectacle in the strictly Situationist sense. It is a shiny display of nations in symbolic, atavistic national combat adorned with multiple layers of commodification, sponsorship and the seemingly infinite commercialization. It is an image of our age at its worst and most gaudy. But it is also something more, something bound up with difficult and recalcitrant questions of conflict, memory, history, place, social class, masculinity, violence, national identity, tribe, and group. The hope of the exhibition Men With Balls is to construct a unique situation where these questions can be ruminated on collectively.

Football is working-class ballet. It’s an experience of enchantment. For an hour and a half, a different order of time unfolds and one submits oneself to it. A football game is a temporal rupture with the routine of the everyday: ecstatic, evanescent, and, most importantly, shared. At its best, football is about shifts in the intensity of experience. And stories will multiply from that experience, stories of heroes and villains, of triumph, and a gnawing sense of the injustice of defeat. The aim of the exhibition is to produce with this show some experience of being together with others in a group, watching a game, waiting for something marvelous, unexpected, and possibly magical to happen. And it will happen.”

MORE [schedule of screenings of matches and curator's statement.]

[Cross-posted to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Text and graphic from apex press release.]

In keeping with the World Cup theme of the month: Today take a step back and examine some opposing vewpoints on the role of football, or sports in general, in our global society.

David Smith gives an account of the benefits of soccer in the world at large in World Cup Dreams by quoting Danny Jordaan of the World Cup organizing committee: “If you want to raise the social issue, ask them, ask those football fans who have no houses, no job. Ask them, ‘Do you want the World Cup in this country?’ You’ll hear an overwhelming yes because that is the lifeblood, that is the generator of hope, that is what puts a smile on many African faces. That is important on the continent. Football is a giver of hope and life and we must never argue that we must deny the fundamental pleasure and joy that football can bring.”

Yesterday Terry Eagelton gave us an alternative view in his Football: A Dear Friend to Capitalism: “Modern societies deny men and women the experience of solidarity, which football provides to the point of collective delirium….With football, by contrast, there can be outbreaks of angry populism, as supporters revolt against the corporate fat cats who muscle in on their clubs; but for the most part football these days is the opium of the people, not to speak of their crack cocaine. Its icon is the impeccably Tory, slavishly conformist Beckham.”

Or if you really want to intellectualize the game, watch the following:

Below and above, excepts of a somewhat flat data-visualization of World Cup economics. Although it fails to go very far with the information it is an interesting starting point for some follow-up analysis and discussion.

“On June 11, nearly 100,000 soccer fans from around the world will gather at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg to watch the opening game of the 2010 World Cup. Millions more will tune in their television sets at home. During the four weeks to follow, the world’s eyes and ears will be directed towards South Africa, following one of the world’s premier sporting events. Soccer may not be overwhelmingly popular in the United States, but on a global scale, the World Cup is the largest sporting event in terms of viewership. Collectively, more than 26 billion viewers watched the games of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany…”

Full Visualization

Note that a link in the article to a Fifa Facts & Figures Marketing site proves to be just as interesting.

[Cross-posted to The Data Stream and to the blog of Goal 2010!, a soccer and social media project. Thanks to CDN in Napa for the tip.]

In case you missed the Maker Faire in San Francisco, see it here in 3 minutes and 18 seconds.  The fabulously successful DIY adventure is coming for the first time to Detroit: July 31 – August 1, 2010, and on to New York City September 25 – 26, 2010.