11.06.–11.08.1994

Four years ago, on the occasion of the Football World Cup 1990, Portikus was transformed into a bar and videotheque with a large projection screen broadcasting the games live and celebrating "Regime der Bilder" ("Regime of Images", avant-garde videos from around the world). The harmonic course the conflict between football and video friends took made the exhibition unforgettable for our regular audience.

A repeat was out of the question. The artist Georg Herold - holder of a chair for sculpture at Städelschule until 1999 - was invited to an exhibition at Portikus and addressed the World Cup spectacle indirectly. On the one hand, the idea of a game of cultural exchange is based on the currently very interesting situation in the young English art scene which already emerged during the time of recession; on the other hand, the appeal of a friendly match lies in the opportunity to extend an invitation the 'inventors' of football. It also has to do with the exchange of cultural differences on the basis of a topic with predefined rules of the game.

In the installation he contributes, Georg Herold creates an open framework into which the other contributions can be inserted.

TV and video are integrated in the exhibition; sequences of feature films from the periphery of football are shown; and there is a bar with live coverage of the Football World Cup.

The interesting factors for both the artists and the visitors deal with art and the artistic implementation of a theme on the basis of an asserted method: football with its elegance, precision, and strategy.

The principle of Karaoke is to break up and expand the predefined and tightly marked-out field. The playful as well as calculated dealings (interventions) with the topics football / World Cup via art on the levels of adaptation / simulation / deception / commitment aim at addressing the disposition and ability to adopt a conscious and controlled, as well as a subconscious and obsessive attitude.

The goals of this project lie not only in cultural exchange but also in an intensive artistic investigation on an international level, especially from the point of view of the younger generation in England and Germany.

The artistic contributions are not reduced to the given works, but will be supplemented by additional contributions resulting from spontaneous collaborations between individual artists.

Photos: Katrin Schilling