SHARON HAYES, RICERCHE: TWO, 2020

2-channel video, 3.2K video, color, sound, 38:47 minutes, Dimensions variable

“Ricerche is a 5 part video series that steps off Pier Paolo Pasolini’s brilliant 1963 film, Comizi d’Amore, to stage a contemporary inquiry into the “sexual problem” in the United States. While the political climate in post-war Italy in 1963 was deeply distinct from that of the United States in this contemporary moment, both are sites of a persistent political condition in which so-called value-based policy and ideology act out symptomatically to cover up underlying economic and political vulnerabilities.

Ricerche: two is an interview with 23 members of two women’s tackle football teams in Dallas/Ft.Worth, TX: the Arlington Impact and the Dallas Elite Mustangs.

Since the inception of tackle football in the late 19th century, organized women’s tackle football has appeared in fits and starts and at varying scales and with limited success. At present there are over 4,000 people playing professional women’s tackle football on 80+ teams across 8 leagues. Despite the professional aim of the pursuit, players must pay a players fee, participate in fundraising events and campaigns for the team. Most players have some other form of employment, many taking  jobs during the season to pay for fees, equipment and travel.

In Ricerche: two, players address football, their passion for sport, family, sexuality, gender and the financial and social obstacles to playing professional women’s football. The players move against, around and in resistance to bounded and regulated ideas of gender pushing gender, and, particularly the category “woman”, into an infinite, powerful and ever-changing container.” - Sharon Hayes