FIGHT SONGS

This is a series of photo essays looking at the role football plays on college campuses and in cities throughout the country.

A combination of poetry, photo, audio, and videos looking at the complex traditions of celebrations of football, tailgates, and the surrounding environments.

Sports bring various peoples, communities, and cities together to cheer on their favorite team. Sports can also separate those very same groups, and the nation itself in championship games. Sport is inherently combative: team vs. team, player vs. player. This versus mentality finds its way on and off the field. What do sports symbolize for our society? We live in a country where divide and isolation is abundant and continues to further rift. Sports has the capacity to bring unlike-minded individuals together. What can the gestures, moves, routines, and plays unlock in daily life? In cities, towns and college campus rich with sports history- fanaticism runs deep. But can a fanbase go too far, and where do we draw the line regarding celebration versus destruction? How can a sport impact a player, a fan, a neighborhood, a city?

All of the images have been photographed by artist Mike Durkin. All images and those featured in the photography and video have given consent to be featured on this blog.

Mike (He/Him) is a multidisciplinary social practice performance artist residing in New York City. Mike was born in Boro Park, Brooklyn, and has lived in Philadelphia for the last 10 years before moving back to NYC. Mike is guided by the intersection between art and everyday. With his performance group, The Renegade Company he has created site-responsive social practice productions exploring food access, place and gentrification. Most recently he created a community-based performance project focussed on substance abuse, addiction, and homelessness working with residents of the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia called: (Kensington) Streetplay. He is currently in development to create a performance project focusing on the role sports plays in communities, entitled, S-P-O-R-T-S-P-L-A-Y. Mike has held residencies with the Space at Ryder Farm, Drop Forge and Tool, and San Luis Valley Social Practice Residency at Adams State University in Alamosa, CO. Mike’s work has been presented at the Brandywine River Museum, Barnes Foundation, Mt. Moriah Cemetery, the Life Do Grow Farm, and in parks, churches, fields, along the streets in Kensington, and online. For more information, check out, www.therenegadecompany.org. Mike is part of the 2017 MFA in Devised Performance class with Pig Iron Theatre Company/University of the Arts.