Three-sided Football and the Alternative Soccerscape: A Study of Sporting Space, Play and Activism

Three teams, three goals, and one ball. Devised as an illustrative example of 'triolectics', Danish artist and philosopher Asger Jorn conceived of three-sided football in 1962. However, the game remained a purely abstract philosophical exercise until the early 1990s when a group of anarchists, architects and artists decided to play the game for the first time. Since these early experiments three-sided football has been played across the globe, from 'anarchist' football festivals in Germany, contemporary art installations in France, through to youth outreach programs in Colombia. Far beyond its emergent context, and as a codified and formalised sport, the game continues to resonate for a myriad of social actors in search of alternative ways to play and live in contemporary culture. This thesis provides the first ethnography into three-sided football. In doing so, it privileges much needed player perspectives on how DIY initiatives are attempting to redefine football in response to the hyper commodification of the elite two-sided game. More broadly, this research is an exploration of how societal alternatives (sporting or otherwise) are imagined, produced, fragmented, and transformed as popular practices in the 'fully lived' space. Further, how such spaces are comprised of individual and collective social agencies which respond, and adapt to, pre-existing structures, inherited symbolic practices and received cultural logics. Drawing from forty-four semi-structured interviews with players, coaches, curators and activists from across the social field, this research is situated within the recent contestations over the games trajectory. This demonstrates the complex social dynamics and 'narrative horizons' at play as the three-sided football community has grappled with how best to foster inclusive, less competitive sporting spaces. Also, how the 'strategic appropriation' of the practice within pedagogical settings has offered a sustainable future for the game. In highlighting the heterotopic, dynamic and ontologically uncertain status of three-sided football, this thesis argues that the game offers participants multiple and competing forms of 'practical consciousness' through which to remake the world; be that as a 'desportized' form of football, as an absurd and playful spatial intervention, or as a form of community engagement.