Instant replay and the viewer. Sports images and their effects

Here I present a study on the pleasure and memory of the spectator, for whom sports images are a vivid, burning topic. The minute, singular discontinuities of time, in a sudden and immediate convergence between eye and image, push to the peak of the aesthetic experience. They are, even in their variety and nuance, the recurring motif, “the whole that returns at once,” of reflection. Thus, the instant replay is configured as the spectator’s time, pleasure, and memory as the dilation of an instant, attention as a temporary interruption of the temporal continuum, and the dream as the progressive thinning of consciousness to which corresponds the imposition of a clear, lucid image of the moment just passed. Johan Cruijff's maneuvers and images, and more generally the Dutch football of 1974, are elevated to the ideal birthplace of an aesthetic experience that grows and expands to include video games. These images are the place where memory and thought are born and then radiate, without it being possible to distinguish the historical images from the pace of reflection.