Football Practice

2021

Football Practice is a software simulation and workshop series that delves into histories and cultural impacts of American Football. The work reflects on the various modes of storytelling within the sport and how these stories have come to shape current understanding of community, citizenship, and nationalism. Inspired by popular sports video games such as Madden as well as the practice game mods where users change, alter, or manipulate how a game looks or behaves, Football Practice uses simulation to challenge and reimagine how a game like football is practiced in society. Ultimately, the emergent narratives that form within the simulation and the narrative arcs of sports indexed through workshop conversations open new access points to parsing the structural histories of America’s most lucrative sports enterprise. The work is a new media tool to imagine alternative strategies of competitive play and consensual violence.