Sogno Insperato: Talking Art and Football on Radio 12to12

From the Ultras Stand to the Curatorial Table

On March 29th, I had the pleasure of joining the podcast Sogno Insperato. Incursioni tra calcio e arte, hosted as part of Radio 12to12, a 24-hour live broadcast by Fuorisedia for the CLOSER festival—a contemporary art program inspired by the legacy of Guglielmo Marconi.

Together with Roberto Colozza, Cristiano Carotti, and Giovanni De Cataldo, I was invited by Emanuele Rinaldo Meschini and Jacopo de Blasio to reflect on how football intersects with artistic and research-based practices. The conversation flowed freely, with all the contradictions and beauty that football always brings with it—ritual, symbolism, violence, choreography, community, and myth.

During the podcast, I spoke about my long-term photographic project Ultras Youth, which investigates the visual identity and ritual grammar of ultras communities across continents. I also had the opportunity to share insights from Art and Football, the curatorial platform I created to explore the connection between contemporary art and football culture.

We discussed ultras not just as fans but as cultural agents, capable of producing aesthetics, politics, and alternative narratives. I believe that football—like art—is a language of complexity, and any attempt to study it must go beyond cliché and sensationalism.

The title “Sogno Insperato” (“An Unexpected Dream”) was inspired by a quote from Cesare Benedetti, a Roma midfielder and painter trained by de Chirico. It perfectly encapsulates how football, like painting, can give unexpected shape to inner desires and trajectories we never imagined possible.