Friday, April 15, 2011 · 12:00 p.m · 537 Heller Virgil Slade Brown Bag Flier-1.pdf
Virgil Slade, PhD Candidate, History Department and Researcher and Narrative Designer, District Six Museum, Cape Town, South Africa.
Offside: Kick Ignorance Out, Football Unites, Racism Divides
(Offside) was launched in June 2010 and is a joint project between the District Six Museum, the British Council, Football Unites, Racism Divides (FURD) and Kick Racism Out of Football (KIO). It is hosted at the District Six Museum's Homecoming Center in Cape Town, South Africa, and highlights the different forms of discrimination that are still resident in the 'beautiful game'. Football (soccer) exhibitions have, almost as a rule, taken on a very specific form both in the South African context and further abroad. Generally, sport displays have adopted the "Hall Of Fame" model that allows very little critical space. In contrast, the main aim of Offside is to provide a counter-narrative to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (commonly known as FIFA) rhetoric as it constituted itself in the build up to the first ever football world cup hosted on African soil. This brownbag will focus on two aspects of the exhibition. Firstly, it will explore why this exhibition has made such an important contribution to public history. Secondly, this discussion will unpack the editorial decisions made by the exhibition team in creating its narrative through a very measured usage of text, audio-visuality, art and space.
