Lakner, László: "Foot-Art" project (Football in the Museum of Fine Arts) (1970 - 2011)

It was in December 1970 that László Lakner read the artistic director of documenta 5, Harald Szeemann’s call for applications to an international exhibition with the title Befragung der Realität – Bildwelten (Questioning Reality – Picture Worlds). Szeemann envisioned a hundred-day series of events, where artistic “accomplishments” and “occurrences” were to appear. Lakner proposed a football match between eleven Hungarian artists and a team of unspecified “westerners,” with the interior of a museum serving as the football field. The team was eager to follow in the footsteps of the classic national eleven (Kassák, Moholy-Nagy), and aspired to play in theMuseum Fridericianum, Kassel. He prepared collages to illustrate an imaginary training and match taking place in the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, as well as a plan of the venue and the floor plan of the “football hall.” Through clandestine channels, he managed to send the dossier of the project to Kassel. Years later, the office of documenta sent the dossier back to Lakner, who in 2010 published the “Foot-Art” project in the form of an artist