Architecture guerilla style

June 18, 2010 7:01 AM

My Playground is a Danish documentary film by Kaspar Astrup Schröder about movement in urban space. The film explores the way Parkour and Freerunning is changing the perception of urban space and how the space is changing the traceurs and freerunners.

If you like this, City Surfers is pretty good too.

posted by Lezzles (5 comments total)

This is just a link to the preview? That's kind of a tease. :/
posted by gilrain at 9:38 AM on June 18, 2010

I loved this, thanks. I am not spring-y enough to leap from/over such heights, but I've always been prone to otherwise touching city surfaces, making that physical/inorganic connection that Klaus Bondam talks about in the preview. Anything that alters our perceptions of our surroundings is a good thing. Plus, it's fun.
posted by analog at 9:40 AM on June 18, 2010

Gilrain: strictly speaking it's the trailer, although there is another "teaser" version. I actually saw this film at an exhibition of Bjark Ingals Group (BIG) work yesterday. But even that was a tease because they'd cut it down to just 30 mins.
posted by Lezzles at 10:10 AM on June 18, 2010

Re-purposing space and re-mapping territories has become one of the dominate metaphors in all levels of cultural production. In contemporary art, mapping the self, mapping the other and mapping new territories are so prevalent they now flirt with cliché.

But it is interesting. Consider skateboarders. They have been re-purposing bureaucratic space for decades. Re-mapping, re-purposing and re-marking a space enables other skaters to re-read the space, understand its alternative uses and build upon the established set. An experienced skater can look at a plaza and stair rail and "read" the way it has been used by other skaters. She can follow that script while improvising and composing new variations.

Another example is infographics. This is graphic design as critical practice and it is almost invariably conceived as cartography. Its purpose is to generate a new, spatially organized understanding of previously hidden connections and relations.

For me, parkour is another example of "cognitive mapping" (Jameson) or schizoanalytic cartography (Guattari), though a weak one. It is a spectacular, solitary activity that leaves no physical trace or script. Exploring some of the potentials, if only preliminarily, of enduring, collective scripts is why this project is interesting.
posted by xod at 10:36 AM on June 18, 2010 [1 favorite]

The photography was beautiful, but I could have done with less philosophizing.
posted by OmieWise at 3:50 PM on June 18, 2010