The Level Playing Field

Julie Koh

On the Level Playing Field, the eternal game is afoot.

No-one can remember the exact date the match began, but most people agree it was at four o’clock in the afternoon, Coordinated Universal Time, when the crowd started to roar.

The cheering began as a supermodel and the Chairman of the Board of the Level Playing Field strode out onto the grass. They carried an LV travel case between them.

‘Welcome to the levellest playing field in existence,’ the Chairman said, leaning into the microphone. ‘On the Level Playing Field, everyone plays by the same rules.’

The crowd continued to roar. Bulbs flashed from the sidelines.

The model and the Chairman opened the case, revealing a shining golden trophy to the world.

‘This trophy is a symbol of boundless opportunity and freedom,’ said the Chairman, his words echoing throughout the stadium. ‘On the Level Playing Field, each player pursues his own interest for the good of all. The Level Playing Field is a showcase of the pure artistry of each man.’

Close-ups of the competitors appeared on the big screens around the stadium, showing them jumping up and down in the tunnel, then running onto the Field. The cameras tracked past their faces as they stood in lines on the grass, singing their individual anthems simultaneously.

The players’ shirts were plastered with logos. Ads in every language – for fast food, light beers, electronics and credit cards – flicked up on rotation on the perimeter advertising displays.

The players were fired up. They shook their thighs and rolled their heads from side to side.

The referee spoke into his mic and signalled that it was time for kick-off.

*

This is what my friend Paul tells me about the Level Playing Field. He says the game has been going on for so long that people in the crowd have gotten married in the stands, reproduced, and taught their offspring how to roar too.

Just the thought of the Level Playing Field makes my eyes shine.

Paul and I are installation slash performance artists. We work as a duo called Duo. Our most recent artwork was a movement piece involving a troupe of dancers dressed up as pigs dressed up as swans. The only problem is that no-one likes our art, so we don’t have any money. Paul says we don’t have a market for our work because we’re ahead of our time. People just don’t get us yet, he says.

‘How do you know?’ I always ask him. ‘What if it’s because we’re behind our time?’

We’re really struggling. I threw out my toothbrush the other day then realised I couldn’t afford another. Paul reckons that we could maybe find a way to get to the Level Playing Field and compete. Maybe then we would earn enough money to live, and even send some cash back to our families.

Paul’s friend knows a guy who’s doing recruitment for the Level Playing Field. We arrange to meet him.

‘Essentially, you’ll be contractors,’ the guy says. ‘No-one in the crowd is interested in doing this sort of work.’

The guy tells us there’ll definitely be opportunities for us to progress up the chain and ultimately play on the Level Playing Field.

Paul gets out his fountain pen and signs his contract with a flourish. I borrow the pen and scratch in my name where the little red and yellow sticky tab arrow says to sign.

*

On the day we’re due to travel to the Level Playing Field, Paul turns up in hot pink overalls and a tweed flat cap.

‘We’re going all the way on the LPF,’ he says, ‘and we’re gonna do it in style.’

The recruiter ticks us off a list and herds us into a shipping container.

I ask if this is normal but he doesn’t reply and disappears.

We talk to the other guys already crouched in the container, smoking cigarettes. They’re all artists too. Everyone has had the same bright idea about playing on the Level Playing Field.

I complain to Paul about the heat and how it’s hard to breathe in here.

‘Disregard it!’ Paul says. ‘The artist must disregard every limitation!’

*

We arrive at the Field in the backs of trucks. A Manager in a suit walks out to meet us. He gets us to jump out in single file and directs us down a manhole.

We climb down into the sewers and tunnel networks below the stadium, where the Manager tells us we’re going to live.

I look around. There are thousands of people already living here. It’s hard to believe there’ll be enough room on the Field for all of us to compete.

The Manager tells us that the rent for the sewers will come straight out of our pay. He says we have to stay invisible and underground during the day when the match is being played.

‘Your presence makes the crowd uncomfortable,’ he says. ‘Apparently, you’ve all got haunted stares.’

‘How rude!’ says Paul. ‘I’m not haunted, and I certainly don’t stare.’

The Manager puts us to work in the tunnels.

We sit underground in long rows, sewing the uniforms of the players and weaving their knee-high socks. All the uniforms we make start off identical but then we pass them down the line so they can be embroidered with different logos before being folded and inserted into clear plastic packets and sent up to the Field.

In the sewer creche, children stitch fluoro yellow sneakers by hand, and thread fluoro yellow laces onto them. The sneakers are sent up with the uniforms, so they can be worn by the players and ball boys.

While we are sewing, we hear the crowd go wild. A player has run to the sideline and has kneeled to tie up the fluoro yellow shoelace of the youngest ball boy. The crowd approves.

The Level Playing Field takes care of all.

*

The Manager tells us that to keep the stadium in tiptop condition, we need to maintain and upgrade it on a continuous basis.

We’re only allowed to do this work at night. We listen until the crowd is gone, and emerge from the manhole, blinking under the stadium lights.

To keep the Field level, we trim the blades of the grass with scissors. We form a line on our hands and knees at one end of the Field, and work our way over to the other side.

We test the perimeter ads and the big screens to check they’re in good working order. We sweep and hose the stands and keep working on the stadium roof, which is still incomplete.

*

We work every waking hour, seven days a week, but we barely earn any money. The Manager says we’re in the process of paying our debt to the Board of the Level Playing Field for bringing us to the Field in the first place. He says this is written in our individually negotiated contracts. None of us has a copy.

In our section of the sewer, an oil painter keels over from overwork and malnutrition. We try to revive him, to no avail. His debt hasn’t been paid, so his sixteen-year-old son is brought in to replace him.

The painter’s death was inevitable – there’s barely any food underground to sustain us.

Paul pokes me a lot and laughs about how hungry we are.

‘I can see your ribs,’ he says. ‘Get some pork belly in you, pronto!’

He’s the sort of guy who cracks jokes when he’s sad.

*

We figure out ways to get food. At night, we gorge ourselves on half-eaten hot dogs and abandoned cups of chips from the stands. During the day, at half-time, we wait for the players to sit down and eat lunch at a long table on the sidelines. Paul and I stretch out our fingers to see what crumbs we can catch through the drain underneath the table.

It’s still not enough, and I despair that we’re never going to progress to positions at ground level.

‘Disregard it all!’ says Paul. ‘The artist overcomes! The artist must die rather than surrender!’

‘I’m not ready to disregard,’ I say.

*

The Board has made the completion of the stadium roof a priority, and allows those artists working on the roof to come out during the daytime to put on the finishing touches.

One day, an abstract sculptor loses his footing and drops to his death onto the Field. No-one hears his scream above the roar of the crowd. The players dodge his body. Two graffiti artists run out and carry him off so that play can proceed uninterrupted.

Above and below ground, artists continue to die. The sixteen-year-old who has been brought in to replace his father has a heart attack.

We make makeshift coffins for the dead but the Board deems them unnecessary. The Manager arranges for the bodies to be dumped back down the manhole. The Board feels this is appropriate so that we can deal with our dead in whatever heathen way we like.

The problem is, there’s nowhere for us to bury the bodies. We don’t know what to do with them. They’re starting to smell.

*

I try to convince Paul that we really have to stop disregarding the reality of the situation.

‘You’re right,’ he says.

He pulls out his fountain pen and we start a petition demanding better working conditions, or release from our contracts. The Manager, however, tells us that the Board will only allow us to present the petition once we have one million signatures. We don’t even have a million artists living underground.

It takes so long to complete the petition that, underneath the Level Playing Field, whole generations of artists reproduce, die and are reborn before the petition can be presented to the Board. Paul and I have already been through one life cycle and are nine years old again by the time the Chairman grants us an audience.

We are taken to the Chairman’s vast boardroom, where he’s sitting at the head of a long table.

‘Well,’ he says, leaning back in his chair. ‘We’ve considered your petition at length. After much deliberation, we are able to offer you the opportunity to protest the Level Playing Field in an assigned area outside the stadium. We understand that you do not have the means to organise a protest, so if you would like to be allotted funding, you must first submit a grant application. A panel will assess your proposals on the basis of merit.’

‘We’re not going to sit here for another three generations waiting for you to read our grant application,’ says Paul.

‘Vicious ingrates!’ says the Chairman, folding his arms. ‘The Level Playing Field is good to us all. The Level Playing Field enables each and every one of us to manifest our own chandelier and swing from it. If you can’t manifest your own chandelier, don’t take it out on us. Don’t spit on our hard-earned money.’

‘Fuck this shit,’ says Paul as we’re taken back underground. ‘Disregard it all! Let’s be artists again.’

‘We don’t have any funding,’ I say.

‘I’ve been thinking about one final piece,’ says Paul, adjusting his tweed cap. ‘We can call it Funeral I. Then we’ll be done with the Level Playing Field.’

After the meeting, the Manager tells us we have to whip up a rain cover for the Field because there’s a ninety per cent chance of torrential rain overnight.

‘Hey,’ says the Manager, grabbing my shoulder. ‘You’ve been letting the stadium get shabby during this whole petition saga. I better see a crapload of work done by start of play tomorrow.’

We work like crazy overnight on the roof and the grass. When we’re done, we make a rain cover and drag it out over the Field.

*

In the morning, the crowd returns.

The commentators talk about the overnight rain, and the cameras zoom in to show officials walking onto the Field to remove the rain cover. The cover is translucent, and stitched together like patchwork. One camera does an extreme close-up, revealing fine hairs on the surface. The cover is made of specially treated human skin.

Officials rush to drag the cover off camera, unveiling a field made of human hair, grouped in patches of black, blond, brunette and red. On the big screens, a camera casts its gaze over the stadium roof, which has been completed using human bones.

The crowd gags. Their beer tastes like sweat; their soft drinks taste like tears.

They rush to the toilets to throw up. Standing under each toilet is a video artist collecting the puke in buckets.

The big screens show the players waiting in the tunnel. They’re refusing to put on their new shoes, which have spikes made from sharpened human nails.

‘I’m ready,’ I say to Paul.

I carry his head onto the Field and place it in the centre, ready for kick-off.

Captial Misfits