Iva Jurić

3 Corners = 1 Penalty is a participatory art project that intertwines traditional handicraft with the universal language of football to activate shared community spaces and collective experience. Central to the project is the creation of a handcrafted football net, knotted using macramé techniques, produced on abandoned or underused playgrounds. This act of making is a ritual of patience, physical labor, and social interaction—a collective practice that transforms a simple object into a symbol of togetherness and cultural exchange. The project stages a series of small-sided football matches once the net is complete. These matches serve as an artistic event and community celebration where distinctions between artist, participant, and audience dissolve. The playing field becomes a shared site of encounter, dialogue, and meaning-making, emphasizing embodied presence and collective agency. As a site-specific work, 3 Corners = 1 Penalty adapts to the unique spatial, social, and cultural conditions of each location it inhabits. The handcrafted net is left as a lasting gift to the community, a resource for continued play and social gathering beyond the duration of the project. Drawing on the language of folk handicraft and sporting culture, the project explores fluidity of roles and identities: the artwork is both object and playing field; the creators are both artisans and athletes; the audience becomes teammate, fan, and participant. This blurring dismantles conventional boundaries of authorship, professionalism, and spectatorship, fostering a new model of collective authorship and shared cultural experience. In the context of increasing automation, digital abstraction, and social fragmentation, 3 Corners = 1 Penalty offers a counterpoint by reclaiming the value of physical presence, direct human interaction, and embodied ritual. Football here is not just a sport but a global cultural code that embodies shared histories and urban life, repositioned as a medium for community-building and micro-geopolitical discovery—discovery not as conquest but as attentive presence and local connection. Ultimately, 3 Corners = 1 Penalty challenges us to rethink how art, sport, and community intersect, proposing that through collective making and play, we can cultivate belonging and presence in a technologically mediated world.