Hiwa K

Walk Over, 1973

Walk-Over 1973 by Hiwa K is a reconstruction of a fairly unknown and bizarre episode of sports history: In November 1973, the play-off for inclusion in the 1973 FIFA World Cup, between the national football teams of the Soviet Union and Chile, was supposed to take place at the National Stadium in Santiago de Chile. However, two months before, the bloody coup d’état lead by General Augusto Pinochet took place, and the stadium itself became a notorious centre for detainment, torture, and the execution of political prisoners. The Soviet Union asked FIFA to relocate the match, and when an agreement could not be reached, the Soviet team did not show up and it was disqualified from the tournament, giving the Chilean team a victory by walk-over and a place in the 1974 World Cup, where they were eliminated in the first round. The “match” took place with only 11 Chilean players, lasting only one minute, the game ended when the Chilean team scored their first goal. Exactly forty years later, Hiwa K filmed a reconstruction of this play in Sweden, where many of the members of Chile’s team lived in exile while the brutal repression continued. The video stages pseudo-sports journalistic interviews where the players reconstruct the match, slowly uncovering the bizarre situation they were part of: playing an invisible adversary in a stadium where their own fellow Chileans were being “disappeared” summarily as they play.