AWILDC-AWP london

Field of Lines looks to sports games and playfields from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt and ancient Britain under the Roman Empire—hopscotch, senet, croquet, running, sprinting, Chinese cuju and other ball games. It draws a collection of such fields and games by overlapping them, oversizing or under-sizing, and sometimes scaling some of them, fragmenting them to create a new field of games and plays. Rules to be yet invented. The field is flat, lines in polished reflective steel are materialized on the ground. Space holder sculptures in steel and concrete by artist Sonia Leimer are located within the field as urban space fragments isolated in an abstract context; they are potential indicators of pauses, actions, construction sites and shifting productive geographies. They allude to spaces that are occupied for the moment, and that are not accessible. Like a chessboard of urban phenomena of power and control, they set the stage for a reflection on urban space and its changes, as well as a reflection on its purpose as a place of emotional investment, of possible political militancy, and of flânerie.

“You need a common language, a language beyond the language”, Tadzio told me. “You need the simplest, universal sports games and table plays for which the rules have been known for decades or centuries. From there, we invent new ones. This is all about communicating without any common language”.

We started researching sports games and playfields from ancient Mesopotamia to Egypt and ancient Britain under the Roman Empire. Hopscotch, senet, croquet, running, sprinting, Chinese Cuju and other ball sports. Indulging in my penchant for catalogs, atlases and typologies, we drew a collection of such fields and games. We overlapped them, oversized or undersized, played with scale, fragmented them to create a new field of games and plays. Rules to be yet invented. The field is flat, lines are materialized on the ground. The title is a tribute to Rosalind Krauss’ seminal text Sculpture in the Expanded Field​. Our field of lines, drawn on the ground, explores the ambiguity of landscape, sculptures and architecture.

Rick Owens corporation

Faroldi
Installation Team: Francesco Bruno, Giorgia Del Tedesco, Nicola Alessio Persic, Greta Zancopè (coordinator)