Crossing the Park

2021 - ongoing

“The contradiction between the romance of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and the feeling that football is hard to love is where my fandom resides. I see it as a methodology, a way of looking at the world through the prism of football. A lifetime as a football fan has confronted me with questions about nationalism and immigration, gender, money, power and what it means to belong. It’s possible to be a football fan without engaging with all these large issues and how they intersect with the sport – it may be easier, too. But I am not that kind of fan. The more I think about fandom, the more I believe that it is not only this predetermined thing – an aspect of birth or family – rather, I see it as a way to recognise difference and think through it. I say that through football I’ve learned to think of love as a form of insistence. For that love to be challenged, the way Hanna’s project challenges the way many football fans think about their connection to their team, means we fans have to come up with a language for that unreasonable thing: a love of a football team. That language will, perhaps, include an awareness of all the things that make football so hard to love. And a warmth towards all the things that make that love possible, that make a whole world.”

Orit Gat, Running past Solitude, January 2024 (excerpt)