The Chosen Few: Aesthetics and Ideology in Football Fan Graffiti and Street Art

(Paperback)

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Just a game This intriguing visual title looks deep into the underbelly of football (soccer) fandom, featuring a vast photographic archive of fans' graffiti and street art captured by a pioneering graffitologist. At the intersection of the street and sport we find themes of the day: how racial, ethnic, and class tensions play out in visual culture.

On the fringe of sports culture are the Ultras, the football fans whose pyrotechnics, chants, wildly creative stunts, and hooliganism are infamous. Using selections from his archive containing hundreds of photographs of Ultras' street art and graffiti, including everything from elaborate murals to stickers to scratchitto incisions and spray-paint duels, award-winning author Mitja Velikonja introduces readers to the visual iconography of a fascinating underworld.

The Ultra subculture is built by no-bodys, the anonymous (primarily) men whose attachments to their teams, specifically in Europe and post-socialist states, sometimes cross the lines into nationalist sentiments and militaristic Blood and Soil extremism. After examining general themes and trends in street art and tifo club graffiti, Velikonja embarks on a case study of fans from his native Slovenia and touches on the roles of neighboring football fans in the Balkan Wars. He continues with an analysis of political and socially progressive graffiti, local trends and circumstances, as well as its role in the United States. As he peels back layers of misinformation and misrepresentation, he cues our understanding of factional mindsets within histories of political instability, arguing for dissensus being a critical element to democracies. In the end, we understand that while always under siege, the ultra-fans require nothing less than fidelity and devotion, but precisely to what can be determined it's anyone's game to call.

Reviews

Velikonja suggests the flexibility of graffiti, showing both their potential to be neutered through domestication and aestheticization, as well as their capacity for serious political subversion.
Maria Todorova, professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, author of Imagining the Balkans
When I saw a horde of Euro football fans urinating in the fountain of a Mediterranean town, I was sure that was all they had to say about themselves and the world. Yet, after reading Mitja Velikonjas book about football fans graffiti, we learn that these fan-tribes have something more to express about our present societies. As Velikonjas archive with hundreds of images shows, these are subcultures from margins of society with a need for public attention, performance and self-expression, whose graffiti and street art has a sketchy yet curiously diverse ideology behind their bizarre spectacles.
Vjekoslav Perica, author of Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States
Mapping the visual and vicious struggles between football supporter groups over dominance and territory in urban landscapes of Europe, Velikonja creates a wonderful overview of this ambiguous, inventive and provocative art form, created by and for the people, and concerned with so much more than football: gender and class, local, regional and national loyalties, money, politics and emotions.
Tea Sindbk Andersen, author of Usable History Representations of Yugoslavias difficult past from 1945 to 2002
Remarkable DIY designs are featured in Mitja Velikonja's scholarly illustrated book. [...] Velikonja's analyses are an essential addition to any discussion about the connection between football and graffiti, as well as its effect on social affairs in the streets.
Anthony Ausgang, Artillery

Author Bio

Dr. Mitja Velikonja is a Professor for Cultural Studies and head of Center for Cultural and Religious Studies at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Main areas of his research include contemporary Central-European and Balkan political ideologies, subcultures and graffiti culture, collective memory and post-socialist nostalgia. His monographs include Rock'n'Retro - New Yugoslavism in Contemporary Slovenian Music (Sophia, 2013), Titostalgia A Study of Nostalgia for Josip Broz (Peace Institute, Ljubljana, 2008), Eurosis A Critique of the New Eurocentrism (Peace Institute, Ljubljana, 2005) and Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina (TAMU Press, 2003). He is co-author of the book Celestial Yugoslavia: Interaction of Political Mythologies and Popular Culture (XX vek, 2012), and co-editor and co-author of books Post-Yugoslavia - New Cultural and Political Perspectives (Palgrave, 2014) and Yugoslavia From A Historical Perspective (HCHR, 2017). He was a full-time visiting professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow (2002 and 2003), at Columbia University in New York (2009 and 2014), at University of Rijeka (2015), at New York Institute in St. Petersburg (2015 and 2016), at Yale University (2020), Fulbright visiting researcher in Philadelphia (2004/2005), and visiting researcher at The Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (2012) and at the Remarque Institute of the New York University (2018). For his achievements he received four national and one international award (Erasmus EuroMedia Award by European Society for Education and Communication, 2008). His last monograph Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe (Routledge, 2020) was awarded as one of the most important scientific achievements of University of Ljubljana for the year 2020.