Thousands of football fans will squeeze into Sanford Stadium this season, cheering, chanting, clapping and woofing their way through every twist and turn of the game. Paul Pfeiffer’s new video installation, “Red Green Blue,” focuses on the theatrical dimension of sporting events, and contemplates the stadium as a site of mass ritual and identity. Presented at The Athenaeum this fall semester, it’s a timely work that will coincide with UGA’s football season as the Bulldogs compete for their third national championship in a row.
Pfeiffer, a New York-based sculptor, photographer and video artist, is well-known for his digitally manipulated images of athletes and celebrities. His body of work draws attention to the peculiarity of contemporary pop culture, investigating nuanced elements pertaining to race, religion and technology.
Named after the image display system based on the human perception of color, “Red Green Blue” deconstructs how multiple channels of carefully orchestrated stimuli are woven together into a cohesive multi-sensory experience. Close-up images of bright stadium lights, glittering pom-poms and metallic instruments dance across the screen, fragmenting the stadium’s scene into its bits and pieces. Removed from the synchronized behaviors of the setting, these fragments feel disorienting and surreal.
Created in collaboration with the UGA Redcoat Marching Band, Pfeiffer explores the band’s role of creating a live soundtrack and guiding the audience’s affect through a rollercoaster of emotional responses. Throughout the 31-minute single-channel video, clips focus on band members and their directors. Bursts of music start and stop as the game plays out, lurching the listener in and out of feelings of anticipation, competition and pride. Without the context of what is happening on the field, however, the installation’s viewer can’t truly share in the experience of the audience, resulting in a disconnection between realities.
Football players rarely appear throughout the film, and are typically shown at moments between play or through the viewfinder of a broadcasting video camera. Disengaging with the hero in the spotlight, Pfeiffer instead leads viewers to consider the overlooked minutiae and underlying strangeness of the spectacle.
Pfeiffer first collaborated with the Redcoats while living in Athens and teaching at UGA’s Lamar Dodd School of Art between 2016–2019. During his tenure as Dodd’s chair, he conducted interdisciplinary research in the fields of art, sports journalism and kinesiology.
“Red Green Blue” is the second element in an ongoing series that began in 2019 with “Amazing Grace / RGB,” a large-scale live performance that contrasted the architectures of stadium and theater. While 50 Redcoat members recreated a two-and-a-half hour musical score from a typical football game inside of the famed Apollo Theater in Harlem, the remaining members of the 400-strong band were live-streamed from Sanford Stadium.
As Pfeiffer’s research expanded in preparation for the performance, it began dovetailing with an ongoing national reckoning over the historical foundations of racial injustice. His statement for the hosting festival Performa Biennial drew attention to the racial disparities on campus, stating, “Since its founding in 1785 as the nation’s first state-supported university, Georgia has been a predominately white institution with a history of segregation, violently contested desegregation, and a contemporary student body that continues to be disproportionately white.”
Deemed inappropriate for a historically Black theater, the game staple “Tara’s Theme” from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was omitted from the score in “Amazing Grace / RGB.” Demonstrating the influence of art, this prompted the Redcoat Band to relinquish the long-divisive tradition and permanently replace the song with Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind” at games moving forward.
Pfeiffer’s critical eye returns in “Red Green Blue” as images of the stadium are juxtaposed with those of the neighboring Oconee Hill Cemetery, a 19th century burial ground that contains the gravesites of both enslaved African Americans and Confederate soldiers. This stark dichotomy between sites creates discomfort and erodes the feel-good fantasy of football. The stadium may feel like a bubble complete with its own customs, dresscode, soundtrack and rules, but it can’t be divorced from the geographical, historical and cultural contexts of its location.
An opening reception for “Red Green Blue” will be held on Aug. 31 from 6–8 p.m., with a performance by Redcoat members closing out the evening. On Sept. 28 at 6 p.m., Pfeiffer will discuss his exhibition with media scholar Phillip Auslander, art historian Isabelle Wallace and director of athletic bands at UGA Brett Bawcum. Gallery director and curator Katie Geha will lead a tour on Oct. 8 at 4 p.m., and the exhibition remains on view through Nov. 18. The Athenaeum is closed on home game days and university breaks, but otherwise free to visit every Wednesday–Saturday from 12–6 p.m.
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