Giulia Iacolutti + Marangoni 105, I don’t care (About Football), 2023

I don’t care (About Football) is an artistic-participatory project involving the players of the Marangoni 105 football team. The Marangoni 105 was born in 2011 within one of the rehabilitation residences of the Udine Mental Health Department managed by the Duemilauno Agenzia Sociale Cooperative.

The title, inspired by the words of a girl from the community, suggests how the game is not an end in itself, but an exercise in social inclusion and integration. In fact, the team is made up of the users together with workers and operators, supporters and supporters. They all wear the number 14 of Johan Cruijff, legendary Ajax player and inventor of total football. During three years of knowledge and work, Iacolutti activated workshops in which they reflected chorally on the mental discomfort and on the path taken in residence, using football as a metaphor for a path and an experience of care.

The research is made up of photographs, meetings, trips, stretching sessions, interviews, projects, writing exercises and collages, all actions that transform the art object into a place of dialogue, in which it is the discovery of the other and of the self that takes centre stage. The process of analysis and self-analysis is then converted into a creative motion that becomes part of the work itself; it is through the cut outlines of the bodies that we investigate the “not” that gave name to the project, that negative to which it is complex to give voice, form, meaning.

With texts by: Maddalena Fragnito, Giulia Iacolutti, Igor Peres and Tiziano Possamai