Polder Cup is the latest site-specific pro­ject by Spanish artist Maider López. The façade of Witte de With (Rotterdam) func­tions as an open call to par­ti­cip­ate in a one-day foot­ball cham­pi­on­ship, which takes place on September 4, 2010 in the polders of Ottoland (Municipality of Graafstroom).

Maider López’s pro­jects focus on the intriguingly humor­ous or the extraordin­ary behind the obvi­ous and ordin­ary. López cre­ates vari­ous events and situ­ations for indi­vidu­als to gather through a com­mon lan­guage, in this case, foot­ball. Polder Cup becomes a moment where diverse groups of the soci­ety are brought together through play, sports and social exchange. Unlike a typ­ical foot­ball game, López’s dis­placed foot­ball field inter­sec­ted by water chan­nels, chal­lenges the rules of foot­ball and encour­ages play­ers to seek and invent new strategies.

Not only does the loc­a­tion cre­ate an unusual situ­ation, it reflects on the long Dutch his­tory of fight­ing against water and the con­sensus soci­ety. With this pro­ject, López hopes to trans­form the func­tion of the polders, going bey­ond its his­tor­ical and agri­cul­tural uses, to host a pub­lic event held within the frame­work of a com­mon sport­ing match. Through the par­ti­cip­a­tion of foot­ball play­ers and audi­ence from all walks of life, the polder will undergo a trans­form­a­tion in which its use can be opened up for new inter­pret­a­tions, chal­len­ging the way in which we per­ceive our spa­tial surroundings.

Maider López is delighted to invite foot­ball and art lov­ers to par­ti­cip­ate in the first and only Polder Cup, either as play­ers or spectators.

Be part of the pro­ject and sub­scribe to this unique cham­pi­on­ship between 3 June and 15 August 2010.

More inform­a­tion and sub­scrip­tion form avail­able on www.poldercup.nl

via Site-Specific Project by Spanish Artist Maider López at Witte de With.