Sidelined: A Game to Rethink Togetherness
Amanda Pinatih — Gabriel Fontana
Parque Gallarza
2026
Who gets to play, and who remains on the sidelines? Curator Amanda Pinatih and social designer Gabriel Fontana explore new, more inclusive forms of sport and play at Concéntrico.
Building on their collaboration for the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale, Pinatih and Fontana have co-developed an educational programme for this edition that brings together students and teachers from several La Rioja schools. Using a toolkit and a series of exercises, students investigate the social dynamics of sports fields in the (semi-)public realm and, based on their observations, collectively redesign the shape of these fields and the rules that govern them, imagining new modes of togetherness.
After completing their designs, participants gather at Concéntrico to present their ideas to one another, followed by a Multiform tournament. Multiform —a sports-based design project by Gabriel Fontana— combines a new team game, transformable uniforms and a three-sided sports field, encouraging players to negotiate, resist and reconfigure existing social power structures and body norms through embodied learning.
An intervention at Parque Gallarza, created in collaboration with scenographers Koos Breen and Jeannette Slütter, has been specially designed for the project. Locals and visitors are invited to play Multiform on selected days or to explore the field in their own way, turning sport into a cultural act and play into a tool for rethinking coexistence in public space.
Amanda Pinatih — Gabriel Fontana
Amanda Pinatih is an art historian, curator and PhD candidate. As Curator of Design and Contemporary Art at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, she brings new perspectives to the museum’s vast collection. Her experimental working method is driven by an interest in developing new formats for knowledge transfer, while her exhibitions and projects explore the intersections of social, political, (de)colonial, environmental and economic issues. In designer Gabriel Fontana’s practice, sport is a metaphor for society: by reshaping sport, Fontana stimulates ideas about inclusion, identity and community, developing alternative team-sport games that deconstruct group dynamics and promote empathy.
Credits
A collaboration with the Embassy of the Netherlands in Madrid and the Nieuwe Instituut. Production of the Multiform garments: Afrikaanderwijk Coöperatie. Implementation of the educational programme Sidelined: Red Planea (redplanea.org). Development of the educational toolkit: Taller enBlanco. Scenography at Parque Gallarza: Koos Breen and Jeannette Slütter.
With the support of
