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Paul Pfeiffer
The Saints, 2007

Still: Courtesy the artist

Video still: Paul Pfeiffer / TBA21

Paul Pfeiffer

Collection

Installation with 17-channel sound, two-channel video projection (b/w, sound), single-channel video on monitor in cast plastic armature (b/w, sound)
32 min 47 sec (videos)
6.4 x 7.6 x 8.9 cm (monitor)
Overall dimensions variable
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Commissioned by Artangel, London with Outset Contemporary Art Fund. Co-produced with the Ellipse Foundation

The 1966 World Cup Final between England and West Germany, a game loaded with historical and cultural significance and played at London's old Wembley stadium, provides the setting for Paul Pfeiffer's The Saints. An installation of great simplicity rendered through tremendous technical complexity, it interweaves original film and sound footage of the 1966 final with a contemporary reconstruction of the game's soundtrack performed by a crowd of young Filipinos in a Manila theatre. This new crowd, entirely dislocated from the central focus of Pfeiffer's installation, serves to demonstrate the universality of fanatic, collective identification, and the transferability of pop-cultural motifs across temporal and geographic borders. The Saints was first shown in London by Artangel in autumn 2007 in an empty warehouse yards from the new Wembley stadium. Several months later, in summer 2008, it was presented in Vienna by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary during the European Football Championships hosted by Austria and Switzerland.

*1966 in Honolulu, USA | Living and working in New York, USA

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Artists

Paul Pfeiffer

Paul PfeifferThe Saints, 2007

Paul Pfeiffer
The Saints, 2007