La constellation sociale du stade

The word "stadium" originally referred to a specific distance equalling the length of six hundred human feet. In its earliest iterations in ancient Greece, the only purpose of the space was for spectators to watch as athletes sprinted from one end to the other. "Stadium" is derived from the Greek stadios, meaning firm or fixed, and invokes a standard, set length, even though it is a measurement derived from the body. This tension between uniformity and variance pervades these works, and the force of the body upon these structures is clear. Here, DiRisio reflects on ways in which the stadium is represented in contemporary art as a space that houses not the imagined communities that it is sometimes said to, but a fractured and fragmented crowd, a sort of social constellation that belies the myth of united spectatorship.