Jasper Sharp in conversation with Paul Pfeiffer
An excerpt, 2009
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Young men in Manila watch the 1966 World Cup final
Jasper Sharp: I am curious to know how your thinking about the 1966 game developed, in terms of the way that you planned to somehow re-enact it.
Paul Pfeiffer: I had the idea to try to reproduce the crowd and the sounds from the 1966 final. Not the commentator or the explanation of what was going on in the game, but rather the visceral noise of the fans and their singing of what were essentially loaded nationalist and religious anthems like When The Saints Go Marching In within the seemingly mundane context of a sporting event. I was interested to recreate these sounds using a contemporary multitude, specifically in the Philippines. I liked the idea that reproducing the sounds in this way has no logical or historical connection to the site. There is no link.
JS: Except you perhaps?
PP: Well, yes. And I was interested to find a way to translate my own upbringing in the Philippines into some sort of artistic expression, without falling into the trap of nostalgic biography. The way I did it therefore was quite objective. Something that is very specific to the social structure in the Philippines today is the value that is placed on labour as a primary commodity. It is used internationally as a tool of trade by the government, who send an enormous number of people out to work in other countries and at the same time now welcome a lot of new businesses from other countries in. Given the history of the American presence in the Philippines, and the premium placed on providing a decent education to every child notwithstanding the relatively impoverished circumstances in which many of them live, there is a relatively inexpensive, English-speaking workforce readily available. Many of them work at international telephone call centres, on a completely inverted time schedule. It's really fascinating. There are hundreds of young people, very much like a college campus, who live, sleep, eat and work within these special compounds in and around Manila.
JS: Were these the sorts of people that you hired to be the new 'fans' for The Saints?
PP: Not exactly. An old friend of mine is actually the director of the National Theatre in the Philippines. He served as the liaison, managing the production very ably and bringing in the right kind of people. A call was sent out and we put together a cast of 1000 young men suitable for the material that we would be performing, and our need to harness an intense male energy, and testosterone, in order to build the psychology of a crowd and get it excited. We planned to use them in an attempt to invoke the passion of English and German football fans among people who actually had no connection to football, to England, and least of all to a single game from 1966. In the same way that many younger English people don't have such a strong connection with it.
JS: Were you present throughout?