VGA Gallery is excited to announce that Football Practice, an ongoing project by Kristen McWharter with Alm Chung, will be on display on the building facade of Hyde Park Art Center from November 21st through December 4th.

Football Practice, by Kristen McWharter with Alm Chung

From 2020 to 2022, a series of online public workshops engaged participants to discuss the cultural impacts they experienced surrounding American football and design their speculative players for a reimagined game. The complex discussion involves how fandom, inclusion, exclusion, gender, race, class, and consensual violence contribute to forming an American identity. These online conversations and the attributes of the players the participants designed laid the groundwork for a dynamic team of artists and developers to create the simulation software that reimagined American football.

Football Practice is an experiment in visualizing the archetypes, stereotypes, and desires that are enmeshed in the narratives of professional sports. The software runs in real-time with AI athletes driven by the motivations of how workshop participants reimagined players for a speculative sport. This exhibition marks the close of a two-year development process and is an opportunity to witness what new narratives this virtual team embodies as they play.

Football Practice is an Artists Run Chicago + VGA Gallery program, and was sponsored by the Illinois Arts Council Agency.