SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink TogethernessSIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness

Allyship
The word allyship, meaning alliance, is used in various emancipation movements to describe the commitment with which an ally stands up for the rights and well-being of marginalised or vulnerable groups to which they do not belong. Examples include white people working against racism, and heterosexual people striving for equal treatment of the LGBTI+ community. In practice, however, it is often more complex because members of marginalised groups often act as allies for communities that are oppressed or excluded in other ways. Like solidarity, allyship involves using certain privileges or political and societal influence to support people from communities that do not (yet) possess such advantages. As part of SIDELINED, you can play the team sport Anonymous Allyship, with constantly changing team compositions (like miniature communities), and explore what it means to receive and offer support.

Fluidity / gender fluidity
Fluidity refers to changeability. A fluid identity implies that someone can identify with different personality traits from moment to moment. A person can continue to develop who they are, ‘what’ they are, and where they belong over time. Gender fluidity means that someone does not identify with just one gender, but can identify with different genders at different times – or with a combination of genders, or something in between. In SIDELINED, you can experiment with this type of fluidity in the sport of Multiform. As the uniform constantly changes colour, the composition of the teams changes too.

Gender
Unlike sex, gender refers not to biological characteristics, but to the social, cultural and psychological characteristics associated with a sex. Gender encompasses what is traditionally viewed as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’, as well as everything in between. Gender is also the ‘role’ with which someone identifies most strongly; a person’s gender does not necessarily have to be the same as their sex.

Inclusion
The inclusion of marginalised people and groups in society on the basis of equal rights and obligations. Thus, the inclusion of existing diversity. However, inclusion does not mean that these people are allowed to form a new culture or organisation. They merely become part of existing structures.

LGBTI/LGBTIQIA+
The abbreviation LGBT is an umbrella term for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Longer abbreviations are also in use, such as LGBTI, LGBTQI, and LGBTQIA+, which encompass even more groups of people.

Masculine/masculinised
The adjective masculine is used to describe characteristics that are traditionally considered ‘typically male’. As a verb, masculinise essentially means making a person, phenomenon or environment supposedly more masculine. In SIDELINED, the word is used in the context of the song You’ll Never Walk Alone. The song was written 80 years ago as an emotional number for a flamboyant musical, but due to its popularity among football supporters, it has since been masculinised. As the anthem of clubs such as Liverpool FC and adopted by Feyenoord fans, it has acquired an image far removed from Broadway. The exhibition offers an alternative perspective by transforming the masculine camaraderie of football and its associated sports and games into a broader, more inclusive form of solidarity

Non-binary / non-binary person
Non-binary is an umbrella term for people who do not conform to the gender binary of male and female, and/or who transcend that binary. There are dozens of gender identities. Examples outside the binary gender model include ‘genderqueer’, ‘gender non-conforming', ‘agender’, ‘genderfluid’, and ‘bigender’. The latter have two genders and/or are double-gendered. These two gender identities may be male and female or something else, and may be experienced simultaneously or alternately. Source: Handreiking waarden voor een nieuwe taal

Othering
Othering involves defining one’s own position and moral superiority in relation to the perceived ‘other’, which is often a group and/or certain cultural and religious practices. The other is dismissed as strange, conservative, outdated or even inhuman. Source: Handreiking waarden voor een nieuwe taal

Queer
An umbrella term for a wide range of gender and/or sexual identities. Additionally, used by individuals who do not wish to conform to a specific term or label. The term genderqueer is usually used when referring to a non-binary gender identity.

Queer pedagogy
The game Multiform turns sport into a form of queer pedagogy. This is a critical educational philosophy that opposes oppressive teaching methods and curricula that impose strict norms regarding gender and sexuality on students, sidelining those who do not meet them. In Multiform, established categories are broken down through this resistance, and players learn to experience the world in a non-binary way.

Queering
As a verb derived from the word queer, queering can be seen as a technique used to challenge norms and expectations surrounding identity. Originally, it primarily referred to the act of reading or viewing media, such as literature or films, in a way that challenges assumptions about gender and sexuality. For example, heterosexuality and masculinity as the standard must make way for a multitude of possibilities and meanings. Over time, queering has evolved into an umbrella term for a broader movement of intentional disruption. Everything, from literature to pop culture and from science to politics, can be queered. In the context of SIDELINED, the curator and designers take the visual language and customs of a sports bar and give them a queer twist. Through this project, they explore how we can break down rigid social structures and embrace diversity, empathy and solidarity.

Situationist
The Situationist International or SI was a political-artistic movement that had a major influence on art, counterculture and public discourse, particularly during the student protests of the late 1960s. The Situationists, who insisted that ‘Situationism’ as term did not exist, wanted to break down the distinction between culture creators and consumers, and to integrate art into daily life. The Danish artist Asger Jorn was one of the founders of this alliance of European visual artists, writers and poets. In the 1960s, he devised a variant of football in which three teams compete against each other on a hexagonal pitch. Rather than a binary dichotomy of thesis and antithesis, true or false, us versus them, or one team against another with a winner and a loser, Jorn introduced a tripartite division. When Gabriel Fontana began experimenting with game formats based on this ‘three-value logic’, he found that it enabled an infinite number of new formations, interactions, manoeuvres and collaborations between players. The spatial design of SIDELINED is also inspired by the hexagonal playing field.

Social design
Social design is a field in which designers use their ingenuity to address complex societal issues and bring about change. If public space, laws, rules and human behaviour are the result of conscious and unconscious design processes, then they can also be redesigned. Social designers often collaborate closely with those directly affected by design flaws in existing systems to achieve this. For example, there are persistent norms that sideline some people from the outset, forcing them to watch social life from the sidelines instead of actively participating in it. Could architecture help to resist those unfair ‘rules of the game’ that exclude certain players? Could places be designed that encourage differences between individuals and the ways we live and interact with each other? In SIDELINED, social designer Gabriel Fontana tackles these kinds of questions. Building upon his earlier research into social dynamics in urban areas and public spaces, he explores these issues. From a sports perspective, he examines how the designed living environment influences bodies and behaviour.

Transgender person
Someone whose sex at birth does not coincide with their gender identity. The opposite of cisgender.

The words and definitions in this list are, like many of the subjects they describe, fluid and not set in stone. They can mean different things to different people, and those meanings shift over time. Feel free to reach out to us if you have comments, suggestions, or questions about this list.