Football as Infrastructure of Democracy

Authors’ Comment

The F.I.D. (Football as Infrastructure of Democracy) installation was built as a result of the competition for ideas launched for the Traian square in Timișoara by BETA 2022.

The F.I.D. micronation, imagined as a direct response to the competition brief, is contained between the physical boundaries of a participatory architectural installation and the fair play rules of sport meetings.The installation is composed of a multi-functional scaffolding and a mini-soccer field, both serving the Fabric neighborhood community as a symbolic agora where, through sports and other spontaneous activities, free expression, community gestures and democracy in general can be performed.

F.I.D. has its roots in the traditional amateur football match, between the "rival" teams of the Married and the Unmarried, started in 1936, in the Fabric district. With no other stake than community cohesion, and beyond the goal score and statistics, every game was followed by a joint meeting with families and friends. Thus, all that was recorded in these years were the pride and emotions of conviviality, which helped to transform the neighborhood into a living place, full of memories and meanings.

F.I.D. is binded by football - a "horizontal sport" that promotes concepts such as the team and the collective, that levels social relations between different people and classes, both among players and spectators. Football is a mirror of our society, containing a language and a way of doing things, offering a functional model that connects us, in one way or another, with the paradoxes of the society in which we live. FIFA's Code of Fair Play encompasses the same universal values that are especially found in modern democracies. Through football, we want to cultivate respect, fraternity, pluralism, cultural and racial diversity, campaigning against racism, intolerance and violence, both on and off the field of play. In such a framework, F.I.D. is a training space for civic values, and participation as an amateur or professional strengthens the feeling of belonging to a community.

Specifically, F.I.D was materialized in the Traian square trough the organization of a micro football championship with 16 teams from the neighbourhood. At the same time, the installation and the football pitch generated during BETA film screenings, informal football matches, children's playground, spontaneous bike parking, video sets and discussion topics.