2021
Europe, a Sports Field is an interactive board game by Freundliche Mitte designed for two players. The aim of the game is to become a hero*ine by tilling the field with one’s own team, it’s as simple as that. Let’s build a new city. But who is the “us” in this sentence and how does your own strategy change the story? Which one is the patch where the beach is hidden, and why do I keep inviting people to picnics? Who gets pushed forward and who gets sacked? Oh, by the way, who gets the ÖBAG now? And why does this all sound so familiar?
In Europe, a Sports Field, the collective Freundliche Mitte turns our continent into a playing field: What’s the space we are dealing with and what does the Democracy Report have to say about it? Europe, a Sports Field undertakes a journey through various countries and periods, visiting all the places once or currently occupied as individuals, gatherings, resistance. The game brings players to places of protest at both the centre and the edges, following movements like Occupy or the Arab Spring, all the way to the Middle Ages with their peasant uprisings and witch-burnings until where bodies are no longer allowed to gather and spaces have to be occupied in different, more volatile ways, by interference. With Europe, a Sports Field, Freundliche Mitte try to find impeded, prohibited, past, failed, successful and future common grounds in the shape of an interactive game in which absurd instructions and quotes mingle with interviews and narratives to make up an alternative fiction that no longer leaves the public sphere to the racists, fascists and other enemies of humanity.
The board game can also be ordered to your home (shipping starting June 7th to Austria and within the EU).
By Freundliche Mitte
Featuring Katharina Bach, Max Bohm, Andreas Fleck, Bernhard Fleischmann, Mahsa Ghafari, Pegah Ghafari, Viktoria Kremer, Stephan Langer, Mirjam Papouschek, Nina Pjanic, Christina Raab, Philine Rinnert, Christina Romirer, Lili Schandl, Anna Starzinger, Dario Stefanek, Gerhild Steinbuch, and the Wiener Beschwerdechor (Artistic Direction: Stefan Hangl / Oliver Hangl)
A co-production by Freundliche Mitte and brut Wien.
In co-operation with Fußballverein 1210, www.zwoelfzehn.at.
With the kind support of SHIFT – Basis.Kultur.Wien.
