DN Opinion. Admit the football supporterkultur as art

The ongoing battle between fans and the police is often portrayed as a matter of bengalers being or non-being when it is really about a threat to art and culture. The issue tends to end up in a sporting context, when it ought rather to be seen in a cultural perspective.

In the stands, meet people with song, chants, flags, banners and tifon. Together they create the mood and setting.

What the debate right now is about is mainly tifon, a samlingsord for different läktararrangemang to pay homage to their team. Tifo can take shape with different materials and expressions, flags, confetti, scarves, or big flags.

colors linked to the club, symbols, and texts together to fill a whole in order to raise the atmosphere but also the identity of the team. Often there are elements of the club, the city, the colors, the history and the community. The lyrics are often based on the team's supporter phrases, songs, or lyrics from artists who sympathizes with the team.

By first thinking out a tifo, and then form an image of it with a message followed by a work like sewing, measuring, sketching, painting, wipe, get up in the stands, handing out flags and to tear out the confetti. Everything should have a red wire, to be timed and be stämningshöjande.

A long period of work to be shown up in a few minutes where everything will fall into place. Tifo, in its physical form and with their cultural understanding should therefore be considered as art and culture, not only as something that happens at sporting events and will be ”a matter for the football”.

of course, in more than artistic terms and find expression in social contexts. Especially for the football in Sweden is that many people in general say that they're cheering on a team. Over two million see the football at the place every year.

the Football leaves no one indifferent. Swedish supporterkultur is however a little more difficult to explain because it can be considered as both a reflection of society where many different people as a part of it, but also as a part of a subculture with a certain type of identity and lifestyle – to follow their team. Football can thus be interpreted as a popular but also a particular part of a culture.

An informal requirements arose that culture should belong to everyone in the sense that everyone should be able to get to understand it. Perhaps it is not reasonable that all can or will understand all the culture that is expressed?

all expressions, or causes to be greasers, larper, punks, or hipsters. It must be okay that I do not understand other people's expression within a certain context when one is not a part of it. If everyone would understand the football all cultural expressions, has not failed as a subculture?

What makes football good or unique in our country is not the sports side, but the art around it, the visual expressions and the atmosphere. By recognizing the web, committee of cultural expression such as art and culture, the understanding of the debate to be more nuanced and understandable.

Therefore, I am waiting anxiously for kulturministerns statement in the debate.