Yara Mekawei skillfully curates a sonic expedition through the annals of football history, drawing upon the eloquent commentary of a range of language luminaries. Each voice that can be heard in the installation serves as a vessel that allows audiences to transcend time and language barriers, aptly demonstrating the transformative essence of oral storytelling. In this auditory landscape, Mekawei’s spatial-sonic installation bridges narratives from the past with the present by bringing various archival and contemporary commentaries into conversation to reflect on football’s resonance beyond the pitch and the possibilities of language and sound to push that boundary.  In this way, the installation does not function as a mere documentation archive; it also reflects on the interplay of sport, language, and collective memory. Mekawei juxtaposes figurative uses of language—such as word play, extended metaphors, and euphemisms—against the historical contexts of commentaries such as Mladen Delić’s 1984 commentary of Yugoslavia vs Bulgaria, which immortalizes the erstwhile Yugoslavian team, or Peter Drury’s commentary, which contextualizes the significance of Kostas Manolas’ goal which meant that AS Roma were able to overturn their fate in a match against Barcelona in the 2018 UEFA Champions League. Taking this rich collection of auditory artefacts as the installation’s foundation, the artist uses the reverberation of sound through the spaces of HKW to undertake multi-dimensional exploration of football’s cultural significance.

This event takes place in the frame of Pitch Poetics: Football Commentary as Oralture.