QUEERSPORT#TO BECOME A TORCHBEARER#01.(2011)

Video-proyection,picture, audio.
Roodkapje Rotterdam. 2011.
(in collaboration with Zeljko Blace)



 

 

“My dream is to become a torchbearer” was the sentence that defined a young chines boy in a particular moment, during the Beijing Olympic Games, wearing angel wings in a land which haven't seen many angels so far, while holding a fake red Greek-like paper torch. Probably, as Olympics finished, he likely forgot about this dream, because he was in love with the hero and not with - becoming a hero.

What does it mean to be a torchbearer? What does it mean to compete in elite sports? Those are the questions I pose to myself by thinking about what QueerSports stands for. As any queer political action starts learning from it’s reference in order to pervert it, to show it’s performativity, to expose it as fake, showing it as a social construction. Watching a documentary about Michael Jordan a reporter told him ‘In the game of stars you are the star of the stars’ that sums-up - what is to be elite athlete, as people who go for success sacrifice everything for the victory. There are no second places. This is not a fantasy or metaphor it's how it works, as to be good at sports u have to train till the last breath since u are very young, constructing yourself into a system towards perfection and into norms of competitiveness. Once you become professional, sports and fun are not connected any more. It is not crazy to believe that is a extreme representation of reality and of the value of success in life. Elite sports in that respect is dangerous product of society as it creates role models impossible to reach.

Sports are factories of heroes. Those heroes that doesn't exist any more, those heroes that don't make mistakes and who are strong in mind and body, those heroes that play alone, self made, super gendered, playing the perfect male/female role, successful, beyond any one else, simple of mind but real fighters. But heroism is ephemeral, only works when you win a gold medal, media preserves the hero but the person behind the hero is not a hero anymore. In sports there are only winners, looser are erased. But as victory is a temporary status, not inherent to people, all the winner became looser just after they win. They are made to be a star, a missile no one can stop, but at list they are all asteroids.

The installation is set up with three elements: A video projection that shows an asteroid turned up side down, raising in stead of falling. An image extracted from a documentary about Beijing Olympic Games showing an skinny little boy. And an audio witch is compose editing parts of documentaries about elite sports and how his family and surrenders idealize them.

The result pretends to create the illusion that the sound is talking about the boy in the picture, sometimes illuminated by the asteroid, trying to convert this little boy in an epic ungendered antihero.