You Don't Know Who You Are

Partick Thistle Football Club, Glasgow, Scotland, 2015

This scarf was commissioned by Kingsford Capital and the THING for the Scottish football club Partick Thistle’s 2015–16 season. Partick Thistle fans are known for being a fiercely independent, non-sectarian (even atheist), underdog counterpoint to the other two Glasgow mega-teams, the Celtic (mostly Catholic fan-base) and Rangers (mostly Protestant fan-base).

While researching this project, I found a remarkable existential chant from an online audio archive.  It was attributed to Partick Thistle fans and featured a group yelling loudly and repeatedly, "You Don't Know Who You Are!"  The chant is not on the official club roster, and the creators of the archive aren’t really sure where it came from, but I felt that the chant, forceful but anonymous, wonderfully blurred the line between sport and philosophy with an assertion that cuts to a core question we all wrestle with at some time in our lives. 

(5,000 scarfs were given away. Other artist commissioned to create editioned works for Partick Thistle that season include: Martin Parr, Barry McGee, David Shrigley, Kota Ezawa, and Jonathan Monk).

Instructions:

1. Hold scarf in the air with text facing the opposing team, or an opponent of your choice.

2. Chant: YOU DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

3. Consider: Do any of us know who we are? 

4. In moments of personal crisis, the scarf can also be turned inward and the same chant applies.