Chapter 15: More than a Compromise: Inter-Relation of a New Cultural Sport

Each individual mind inheres in multiple Selves that exist within an environment and a culture. The negotiation of these creates a continuous dialogue out of which a connection of Umwelt and culture emerges. This process can be defined as the main concept in connecting the Self with culture; a construct that surpasses humanity’s imagination, and is found in countless forms, whereby only fragments of this construct become central for the individual’s self-identification.

For this chapter, the connection of sports and art as catalysts for cultural development shall become the central element. Through the coexistence of these within each individual and the society, subcultures are created based on human understanding and obeyed only in their definitions as a linear distinction. Within this developmental process, the borders between two seemingly different spheres—sports and art—become fluid. Within this unique way of development, traditional sports are re-constructed by adapting old rules or by re-connecting forgotten rules in a new conceptuality, and new sports are created by linking all kind-of subcultures with each other. Most important becomes the vanishing desire to compete; an essential part of the historical development of sport and its principles, which now becomes replaced by cooperation of the individuals and groups rather than comparison. On these principles the phenomenon of creating art through sports will be explained and visualized through specific examples from the merged subcultures of these areas. The focus hereby lies on the potential and possibilities of the emergence of new-sports as new cultural fragments by the dialogue between the multiple Selves and the environment; with the theoretical anticipation that all fragments of culture are treated or will be treated differently in an individual’s self-identification process. It becomes clear that within the Self the new idea of a sport has to arise first through creative processes and desire, followed by the establishment of a new cultural segment. The final creation of new sports results from the multiplicity of dialogues between the Self and the relevant environment.

The objectives of the following chapter are finding answers to questions such as: “How can fragments of subcultures be developed?”; “How does the individual or society trigger the creative process?”; “What are the circumstances that arise while creating the new fragment of the fused subculture of Sport and Art?”; and “What happens when the process failed?”