Paul Pfeiffer: The Saints
September - October 2007
The Junction, Engineers Way, Wembley HA9
Warehouse on Engineers Way
Wembley Stadium lies at the heart of England’s image of itself. Built for the Empire Exhibition of 1924, the original stadium hosted many momentous events which form part of the collective memory of the nation — sporting contests and mass rallies — moments of great national remembrance and rejoicing.
The opening of the new national stadium at Wembley in 2007 was the catalyst for a major new sound and video installation by the leading US artist Paul Pfeiffer. Presented in a vast empty building standing in the shadow of the new stadium, and on the footprint of the original Empire Exhibition, The Saints celebrated one vital element of the stadium — the crowd. Pfeiffer is intrigued by the multitudes who flock to the stadium to watch and cheer and worship, to lose themselves and find themselves in mass communion with their heroes on the field of play.
The sounds of the crowd beseeching, cheering, chanting and praying, swept around the site. Anthems and hymns — Rule Britannia, Deutschland über Alles, When the Saints Go Marching In — mixed with the chants of the names of individual footballers… Bobby Moore… Nobby Stiles…. It was the noise of the crowd at the most famous sporting event ever staged in Britain, the 1966 World Cup Final between England and Germany.
Moving between bubbling enthusiasm, edgy anxiety and intense communal joy, the arena of the installation reverberated with the sound of Wembley’s history. Played through a large constellation of speakers, the spectator experienced the soundtrack to a now phantom spectacle.
Video projections in the space revealed a surprising source for some of the sounds. Pfeiffer outsourced a cover version of the 1966 Final to a new and distant multitude. A crowd of young Filipinos was brought together in Manila, an outpost of a different Empire, to chant and cheer their way through the experience of 1966.
Somewhere in the middle of all this sound and fury, a solitary figure ran this way and that to no apparent purpose on an otherwise empty pitch, lost before the crowd…
The Saints is included in The Artangel Collection.
This project was supported by Arts Council England, Artangel International Circle, Special Angels and The Company of Angels
