Emozioni Mondiali (2018 – ongoing)
Emozioni Mondiali is an untranslatable Italian expression that plays on the ambiguity of the word mondiali (meaning, as an adjective, “worldwide, global”, but also, in a more informal context “great, unique”; as a name, it refers to the FIFA World Cup, in Italian “Mondiali di calcio”). As an hashtag, #emozionimondiali appeared in the spring of 2014, when the Brazilian edition of the tournament was approaching. It was accompanied by the pictures of the epic success of the Italian team in 2006, but, despite the marketing campaign, almost nobody used the hashtag. The Italian team didn’t play that well and the turmoils that accompanied the World Cup shifted a good portion of the attention of both the public and the media from the pitch to the geopolitical ground. In the same period, ISIS was using the hashtags referring to the World Cup in order to infiltrate their videos everywhere.
This mixture of sport and politics fascinated us, and in 2017 we decided to combine it with our doubts about the possibility of making political art without referring to the contradictions of the art system itself.
Emozioni Mondiali consists of an expansion kit for Pro Evolution Soccer 2018, one of the most famous football videogames in the world. The visitors are invited to play with the custom teams included in the kit, each embodying a movement or period since the birth of art history until the present day. Each team includes 20 artists reproduced in their physical appearance and characteristics. The collision between the art system and the male association football world produces a series of stimulating frictions, highlighting several subjects that range from the representation of gender to the influence of the market, from the visual osmosis between art and sport to the role played by simulation nowadays, from the liberation of language to the questions concerning the value of an artwork or an artist.
The 20 teams included are:
Rinascimento, Baroque, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionnisme, Futuristi 1909, DADA, S.F. Surrealiste, Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus, Pop Art, Conceptual Art 1961, Art Informel, Land Art, Arte Povera, Young British Artists, Dreams and Conflicts – Venice Biennale 2003, Photo-Legends, Post-Internet, Documenta (13).
This project was possible thanks to: Elisa Anastasino, Lorenzo Balbi, Gianmarino Battistella (the Fluxus expert), Cristopher Ghioldi, Alessio Keilty, KONAMI Europe, the staff of MAMBO, Alessandro Manzi, MLZ Art Dep, Simone Monsi, Cloé Perrone, Porto dell’arte, and all the gamers who published PES2018 online tutorials.