The Rotterdam Kunsthal is the venue for a documentary report into the Polder Cup, a project by Spanish artist Maider López. For the Polder Cup, López brings together in a unique manner the Dutch passion for football and the traditional landscape of Holland: the polders (areas of land reclaimed from the sea). Maider López paints the lines of football fields on grazing land on the polders close to Ottoland, in Holland's southern province. This was done irrespective of any obstacles (such as ditches across the pitch), forcing the players to improvise new rules. López filmed the matches for their presentation at the Kunsthal, thus offering an overview, with photographs and films, of this remarkable game of obstacle football.
López's aim with the Polder Cup was to bring disorder to the traditional function of the polder landscape, with the role played by the public in general in public spaces and the relationship between groups and individuals being of vital importance.
Through her interventions in public spaces, Lopez aims to break with tradition and introduce new rules in order to treat people not simply as individuals but also as part of a community. The polders provided the inspiration for the "polder model", and as such are a symbol of the Dutch culture of consensus in decision-making. The footballers in the Polder Cup, however, do not adopt decisions by consensus. Once the players had fallen into the ditches a couple of times, the new rules of the game were generated in a natural manner.
