The Capitalist City and Social Diversity: How

The Capitalist City and Social Diversity:
How Skateboarders perform Criticizm
against Homogenizing Forces within the
Urban Space
Los Angeles 1970s, Skater: Jay Adams, Photographer: Craig Stecyk
18 December 2013
MA Arts and Heritage:
Workshop Current Debates in Arts and Culture
Supervisor: Philip Lawton & Emilie Sitzia
Roxana Černický
I6059226
Number of Words: 5154
Outline
0. Introduction
1
1. Context : Urban social Diversity
2
2. Background: History of space according to Lefebvre
3
3. The spatial triad: Spatial practice, representations of
space and representational spaces
5
4. Social space
9
4.1 Body space
9
4.2 Time
10
4.3 Skateboarding and the body
11
4.4 Skateboarding and time
12
5. Non-places
5.1 Train Banks Spot Malmö
13
14
6. Sound Art
15
7. Conclusion
15
8. References
17
0. Introduction
In many regards, the city represents a crucial area of studies for a large number of
fields like sociology, urbanism or economy, just to mention a few. Before the
industrialization process started, the majority of the worldʼs population has been living
in rural areas. Ever since, the rural exodus brought gradually more and more people
into the cities, which became home for more people, whereas in the countryside a
low proportion of inhabitants remained.
With the new ways of living, a variety of new lifestyles grew out of the ground, which
often clash with prevailing capitalist power. Societyʼs multiple identities are exposed
to the homogenizing forces of modernity, whose impact can be seen in many ways.
The degree of inclusion or exclusion depends on how much their lifestyle is different
for the standards.
The
worldʼs
skateboarding
community
represents
a
group
of
resistance,
reinterpreting the functions of urban representations of space. Although it is seen as
a childʼs play activity for a lot of people, it is indeed a complete alternative lifestyle,
whose marginal position enables it to function as a critical exterior to architecture and
urbanism. In doing so, it can help to rethink architectureʼs manifold possibilities
(Borden 2001).
The aim of this paper is first to discuss the way urban space is produced under the
dominating influence of capitalistic order, using essentially Henri Lefebvreʼs theory on
Production of Spaceʼ as methodology. Secondly, the paper aims to position these
modes of production in parallel to the recovery of urban spaces through the
appropriation by skateboarders, who are acting in micro-spaces within the city
network. Based on this, the research is trying to answer the following research
question: How do the activities of skateboarders perform criticism against the
homogenizing tendencies in postmodern cities?
The chapters are organized as followed:
In the first part a context on multiple identity groups, with focus on what is commonly
referred to as ʻsubculturesʼ, within the modern cityscape will be given. Secondly, a
background on history of space from the perspective of urban philosopher Henri
Lefebvre will be provided. Thirdly, the process of space production, based on
Lefebvreʼs spatial triad as methodology, will be illustrated using the Southbank
1
Centre in London as an example that represents the role of the skateboard culture.
At fourth, after a general discussion about the role of the body space, as well as the
aspect of time; the relation of body, time and space in skateboarding will be regarded
more specifically. At fifth, the notion of non-places will be explored in order to give an
illustration on how skateboarders respond to it. At sixth, a pre-conclusion will give a
quick insight into the way sound artists reinterpret urban space as completion to the
way skateboarders do. Finally, the paper will be concluded by summarizing the main
issues and by projecting further possibilities of research related to this topic.
1. Context: Urban social diversity
A number of scholars like Bauman (1998), Harvey (1978), or Mitchell (2003) (see
Daskalaki & Mould 2013) have described the world city as “homogenized
consumption space where the built environment both ʻexpands and expends capitalʼ ”
(Cuthbert, 2003: 29, cited in Daskalaki & Mould 2013: 2).
However, it is an undeniable fact modern urban environment of big cities is full of
social diversity of different genders, ages, life stages, ethnic origins or sexual
directions; each of them representing a huge variety of different personalities, values,
attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Nevertheless, the capitalist forces of the
postmodern city seem to ignore this diversity, favoring economic over social benefits.
Dominant tendencies supporting the capitalist system are the creative city for the
creative class, the attractive city for tourists and the emancipation machine for those
who want to grow on the societal latter (Karsten 2009). Families, for example, are
surprisingly largely excluded from the plans of decision-makers on the design of city
centers (Karsten 2009). None of these top-down models is able to provide
convenient living spaces for families, so that young parents who actually enjoy living
in city centers where they benefit of a number of advantages, feel obliged to move to
the suburbs once they get children (Karsten 2009).
Urban social groups like skateboarders, BMXers, graffiti artists, parkour artists, yarn
bombers, urban explorers and urban pranksters, of which some gained already more
attention than others, are also affected by the domination of capitalist homogenizing
forces and struggle with expulsing measures in the urban environment. However,
their activities, which use different artifacts within the urban environment are largely
restricted and prosecuted. Signs declaring ʻSkateboarding Prohibited or ʻNo Parkour
2
at Any Timeʼ can be found in many cities all over the globe. Also very popular is the
application of skate stoppers, in form of metal brackets, knobs and clips, which are
placed in a regular distance on smooth ledges, aiming to hinder skateboarders from
using a particular urban edifice.
Maria Daskalaki and Oli Mould noticed a tendency towards a simplification of these
urban activities of resistance, describing them as ʻthe otherʼ, who opposes economic
and consumerist order (2013). This stereotypical reduction contributes to what is
called a ʻsubculturalizationʼ process, effecting directly the reinforcement of
homogenizing standardization processes, while totalizing the urban discourse
(Daskalaki & Mould: 2013).
For this reason Daskalaki and Mould suggest to refer to these groups of urban
resistance not as subcultures, but rather as ʻurban social formationsʼ (USF).
Furthermore, instead of considering them as isolated units at the edge of mainstream
cultural activities, they privilege the notion of rhizomes, a concept first used by Jung
(1963) and later by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) to describe the USF. The picture of
tree-like shapes of intermingled branches, constantly growing and twisting, crosslinked within the whole city including every little corner, characterizes best the
dynamic of the USF. “Rhizomatic membership to the city [...] allows [...] members to
write their own immanent urban stories, rather than some observational metanarrative of capitalism, subculture or other cultural hegemony” (Daskalaki & Mould:
2013: 2). As such “ their identification becomes not the antipode of a homogeneous
cityscape, but a fluid, emerging process” (ibid).
2. Background: History of space according to Lefebvre
The Marxist thinker and urban sociologist Henri Lefebvre strives for a different
society in which the politics are not part of the elite, and where revolution occurs not
through political movements, but through the arts (Schields 1991). He prospects
social life, in which the everydayʼs life is helped not through the technological
progress or the absence of war; not comfort or the length of life, for Lefebvre solely
the chance for a fully lived life is the measure of civilization (ibid.). Furthermore, he
values the understanding of the interconnected nature of everyday life and space,
seeing social concerns as an embodied and three-dimensional world (ibid.).
3
Investigating social attitudes towards space, as well as its political implications, he
seeks to bridge different disciplines and approaches to create a concept of social
space as a whole, striving to put “an end to the technocratic specialization of
academia and the organization of government” (Shields 1998: 141).
“Not so many years ago, the word 'space' had a strictly geometrical meaning: the
idea it evoked was simply that of an empty area. [...] To speak of 'social space',
therefore, would have sounded strange” (Lefebvre 1991:1). Until recently, history of
space emphasized a rather abstract connotation to the word ʻspaceʼ including
geometrics, mathematics; maps and drawings, or the mindsets of architects and city
planners representing the higher authority. One might think that history of
architecture is helpful for the writing of history of space, due to its spatial nature; but
architecture is only one of many ways to look at space (Lefebvre 1991).
Indeed, Lefebvre identifies a large number of different categories of space, which
were always studied separately through the eyes of different specialists: the
landscape is measured by geographers, the financial field studied by economists, the
space of the body examined by medicines and the designed building object belongs
to the domain of architects and city planners (Lefebvre 1991; Borden 2001). Those
divided views result in the fragmentation of space into many disconnected disciplines
instead of one ensemble.
The risk of separating views on space as a whole is that the “specialist [...] makes
this methodological moment into a permanent niche for himself where he can curl up
happily in the warm” (Lefebvre, 1991:107) which, allows him his own specific
representations of space (Lefebvre 1991), while “notions of social change, of urban
conditions and of social struggles of all kinds have been lost to view” (Borden
2001:8). Beyond the traditional architectural view on space, the Marxist thinker
examines the spatiality of society and political action. Places are produced through
the interrelation of history, political and economical processes in which activities
associated with a certain place shape its identity (Shields 1998).
4
Fig. 1 Together the fragments of space create a harmonic disorder, Source: Kwi: Outer Time Invading Inner Space.
Audio Archive.
“(Social) space is not a thing among other things, nor a product among other
products:
rather,
it
subsumes
things
produced,
and
encompasses
their
interrelationships in their coexistence and simultaneity — their (relative) order and/or
(relative) disorder” (Lefebvre 1991: 73). In order to achieve social space, differential
space must dominate over abstract space; abstract space tending towards
homogeneity, whereas differential space accentuates the differences through lived
space, which will be explained in the next chapter (Lefebvre 1991: 52).
3. The spatial triad: Spatial practice, representations of space and
representational spaces
In his perceived—conceived—lived triad, in spatial terms: spatial practice,
representations of space, representational spaces; Lefebvre illustrates three different
ways how space is produced. This trinity will be illustrated hereafter using the
example of the Southbank Centre in London, which is a hot issue at the moment with
regard to the skateboarding culture.
5
Fig. 2 Southbank Centre London, Source: Donat: The Hayward Gallery in the early 1970s. RIBA
The architectural complex represented on fig. 2 is situated on the South bank of the
Thames River in London and “includes Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth
Hall, Purcell Room, the Hayward Gallery, and the Saison Poetry Library; [in addition
to] these venues, there are restaurants, cafes, bars and shops” (Southbank Centre
1998–2013: About us). It was built in 1951 and extended during the 1060s (SBC
1998-2013: SBC History).
Firstly, the Southbank Centreʼs visitors or users living in London or elsewhere,
produce the building as a perceived space or spatial practice. For them the SBC is
one of many intersections within their network of work, private life and leisure. Spatial
practice is shaped by routine and governed by rules, which the users have to learn
through experience in their everyday live (Lefebvre 1991). Considering that the SBC
opens and closes the different venues in a specific interval of time, it co-dictates the
overall rhythm of the city life. The member of the society produces a submissive
relationship to the particular place as he/ she applies the rules, ensuring, continuity
and some degree of cohesion (ibid.).
Secondly, as conceived space or representation of space, we can say that the SBC
is a product of the imagination of specialists, in this case the architects Sir Robert
Matthew and Dr. Leslie Martin, whose titles already suggest that they represent a
higher authority; the London County Council (SBC 1998-2013: SBC History).
Representations of space are the dominant spaces as they impose order and rules,
deciding about the practical use in any society and tend ʻtowards a system of verbal
6
and [...] intellectually worked out signs (Lefebvre 1991: 39), which intervene in and
modify spatial textures (Lefebvre 1991). Lefebvre compares specialists with
speculators, as they try to identify, how the population perceives the space they
conceive (ibid.). The SBC is a good example of unsuccessful speculations about the
final use. The bottom part of the SBC, consists of an undercroft: “What it is for,
nobody knows”, explains Iain Borden (2013), meaning that the intended function of
the open-left ground floor was seemingly never understood by anyone.
However, rhizomatic social groups figured soon out how to make positive use of this
seemingly futile room. For forty years, the local as well as international skateboard
community wrote the undercroftʼs rich history, by giving this place a new function no
architect could ever have imagined (see fig. 3). Together with graffiti artists, BMXers,
parkour artists, and a number of musicians performing informal concerts, the place
was given a new identity expressing a living popular culture depending on no rules
whatsoever. Southbank's undercroft even attracts tourists and visitors from around
the world for its vivid atmosphere (LES 2013).
Fig. 3 Skateboarding in the Undercroft, Source: Vans
And so the third element of Lefebvreʼs trinity, referring to lived space or
representational space, is produced whether by artists or members of subcultures,
who take possession of a space, filling it with their creative imagination, translating it
7
into action and thus, creating a change (Lefebvre 1991). Representational space is
alive: it reflects emotions and passion, action and lived situations, and thus
immediately implies time (ibid.). Furthermore, the relation that is established to the
space “is essentially qualitative, fluid and dynamic” (Lefebvre 1991: 42). However,
the representational space tends to be a less coherent part of the overall society, as
it is a marginal group that produces it, which doesnʼt obey to the general rule
(Lefebvre 1991). The skateboarder undertakes actions onto that architecture,
refusing to accept it as pre-established reality, instead recreating the space
according to his or her ideas and pleasure, while criticizing the homogenizing forces
of modernity.
Unfortunately, although the street culture of London created a rich cultural and
popular place where everybody is welcomed, the undercroftʼs life is threatened today,
because of new plans by Londonʼs decision-makers projecting a new representation
of space, which aims to alternate the current architectural site (Long Life South Bank
2013). The consequences include a shutdown of the undercroft, and therefore
jeopardizing a jewel of street culture. The new plans mobilized thousands of skaters
and other people adhering to the cause (ibid.).
To summarize, we can say, that ideally architecture should be at once perceived,
conceived and lived. “If the distinction [between the three modes of production] was
generally applied, we should have to look at history itself in a new light. [...] History
would have to take in [...] the interconnections, distortions, displacements, mutual
interactions, and the links [between the different production levels of space]”
(Lefebvre 1991: 42). Londonʼs decision makers probably havenʼt yet considered
taking the spatial triad as model placing priority on the representation of space and
intending the enlargement of capitalist power by creating a new social practice for the
inhabitants. The skateboarders and the other members of the street culture continue
the fight aiming to give a chance for their representational space, while preserving
the peopleʼs heritage.
8
4. Social space
As already quoted in chapter 2, a social space is the sum of a great diversity of
things and objects that are interrelated in a harmonic disorder, also called the real
world. The problem is that the abyss between capitalistic urbanism and social space
has resulted in homogenization of space, where “repetition has everywhere defeated
uniqueness, that the artificial and contrived have driven all spontaneity and
naturalness from the field” (Lefebvre 1991:77). The consequences of those
homogenizing forces influence our life in the modern city by neglecting a number of
features, which are vital for the creation of social space. In this chapter I am going to
focus firstly on the role of the body, secondly the aspect of time and thirdly the
concept of non-places, a more recent notion established by Marc Augé (1995). My
intention is to elaborate on these three parts in both concerns: a theoretical view next
to the practical real life situation in skateboarding.
4.1 Body space
The body plays a major role within the urban landscape, as space can only be
perceived and lived by a person through the medium of a body. A person is subject
of a relationship between the initially conceived space and her- or himself while
representing of a group or society. This relationship requires the sensory capacities
of her or his body (Lefebvre 1991). Although the relationship between body and
space is of great importance it is misapprehended today:
“Western philosophy has betrayed the body; it has actively participated in the great
process of metaphorization that has abandoned the body; and it has denied the body.
The living body, being at once 'subject' and 'object', cannot tolerate such conceptual
division, and consequently philosophical concepts fall into the category of the 'signs of
non-body' ” (Lefebvre 1991: 407).
Bodies are very susceptible for different strategies of spatialization: Living bodies
“are caught up not only in the toils of parcellized space, but also in the web of what
philosophers call 'analogons': images, signs and symbols” (Lefebvre 1991: 98). The
flux of information all around the space promoting ideals of human body, aims to
create desires of body alteration (Lefebvre 1991). Even objects can fulfill the function
of these analogons: cars, for example, “are at once extensions of the body and
9
mobile homes, so to speak, fully equipped to receive these wandering bodies”
(Lefebvre 1991: 98).
Nevertheless in the past, the human body used to be an essential element in
representations of space (Lefebvre 1991). People used to measure space by the
means of special units of measurement,
“borrowed from the parts of the body:
thumb's breadths, cubits, feet, palms, and so on” (Lefebvre 1991: 110). In doing so,
they created their particular group identity on a local level, because their way of
measuring would be incomprehensible to all others (Lefebvre 1991). The bodily
techniques of measuring are replaced today by quantitative approaches everywhere
contributing to homogeneity. To replace the lost role of the body in representations of
space, people have “to seek refuge in art” (Lefebvre 1991: 110).
4.2 Time
As typical phenomenon of modernity, “time has vanished from social space”
(Lefebvre 1991: 95). Edward Soja notices that economies are commonly built on
clustering things together with the aim of savings in time (2003). After all, time can be
measured in terms of money, “since it can be bought and sold just like any object”
(Lefebvre 1991: 96). Already in 1903 Georg Simmel noticed the prevailing
quantitative attitude towards time stating, “modern mind has become more and more
calculating” (Simmel 2004). He explains that the new technology of metropolitan life
is unimaginable without strict order. All activities and interrelations depend on a
highly punctual time-scheme, otherwise “the whole structure would break down into
inextricable chaos” (Simmel 2004). The consequence of the time-precision is a high
degree of impersonality (ibid.).
Time is even more fundamental to human life than space because, ʻlived timeʼ is the
“greatest good of all goods” (Lefebvre 1991: 95). Unlike space, “it cannot be
constructed. It is consumed, exhausted, and that is all” (Lefebvre 1991: 95, 96).
According to Simmel, the true value of life lays alone in the unschematized existence,
which forms the opposition to precision (Simmel 2004). The time needed for living
should escape from all logic of spatialization (Lefebvre 1991). Time may have been
promoted by the philosophers as an essential element of the living being, “but it has
been murdered by society” (Lefebvre 1991: 96).
10
4.3 Skateboarding and the body
“Change life! Change society!” (Lefebvre 1991: 59): Lefebvreʼs call for an
appropriate space. One might find the solution of change in smashing down the
government, shut down every bank in the world and burn all the money, others just
ignore and live their life adapting to the machinery of capitalism. And yet others
produce changes, on a tiny scale compared to the size of the world though, but still
changes.
Skateboarders produce these little changes in bringing back body space and
lived time into the capitalist world using a tool, which is the skateboard, literally fusing
with the architectural environment.
The skateboard is absorbed into the body of the skater, who while riding, combines
sound, touch, smell and vision sensations to render architecture into a full body
encounter, what Iain Borden calls the “body-board-terrain relation” (Borden
2001:104) in which moves are rather felt that seen (ibid.). But balance, posture,
muscular control, strength, agility and fluidity are as important to perform moves on
the skateboard, which can only be achieved through long and repetitive practice and
the acceptance of being hurt many times before gaining sufficient coordination of the
body. While riding a bowl, to give an example, the skater drops-in and uses the
curved wall to gain speed, understanding its lines, pushing more whenever the
architecture of the bowl allows it, in order to achieve the perfect conditions of
balance, angle and speed to do the trick. The only rule for efficient practicing is
enjoying and taking pleasure, which is found in the immediacy, the present and the
close future; a different pleasure from the ordinary leisure offers in the city.
“He who does not know how to vary our pleasures will never give us pleasure. The
city should in fact be a varied picture of infinite unexpected episodes, a great order in
the details, confusion, uproar and tumult in the whole.” (Milizia 1830, cited in Tafuri
1976: 20).
Through skateboarding the fleshy body becomes, whether the skater is conscious
about it or not, a place for revolutionary activity as it produces different rhythms of
space and time. The active and dynamic movements of the bodies transform
everyday life into work of art, while criticizing capitalism (Borden 2001).
11
4.4 Skateboarding and time
The production of time becomes evident through the skaterʼs run across the
skatepark. Whereas time in capitalism is increasingly measured, time in
skateboarding is very undefined and varies according to the duration of the session,
or the number of tricks during one run, which is determined by the skaterʼs own
abilities. The rhythmic pattern during a run is built on speed, direction and distance of
the transfers in between each trick; while for instance the skater oscillates between
the curved walls of a bowl, always maintaining fluidity (Borden 2001). The runʼs
“bewitching pendulum rhythm of the skater moving between one wall and another is
interspersed with sudden eruptions of aggressive energy; temporally, a series of
calm periods, lasting a few seconds, are punctuated by extreme body-contortions
and board-terrain engagement much shorter in duration” (Borden 2001: 111). Series
of calm periods are alternated with high effort explosions and physical energy.
Temporality is further differentiated during the
trick itself. Coming back to the example of riding
a bowl, when arriving to the top of the radius,
called the coping, the skater can make an ʻairʼ
meaning that she or he looses contact to the
ground and takes off. This move is followed by a
moment of suspension, where body and board
hang in space for the fraction of a second, and
suddenly time seems to stand still (see fig. 4),
before the law of gravity takes over again and the
skater dives back into the ramp, reconnecting
with the ground (Borden 2001).
Fig. 4 ʻFrontside Airʼ, Source: Skate Malmö
To summarize, the encounter between skateboarding and architecture involves all
sorts of physical interrogations. Regarding the aspect of time it is “closer to the
rhythms of music or the imagined spaces of poetry and literature than to the sights of
12
the visual arts, linking inner and outer life, body and architecture, action and
meaning” (Borden 2001: 112).
5. Non-places
The French anthropologist Marc Augé discusses the fact that supermodernity
produces a dense network of non-places (Augé 1995). These non-places are the
result of the current world of transit, where urbanity is designed and constructed in a
way to make people not stay at one place but make them pass through. As examples
for non-spaces Augé cites hospitals where people are born and where they die, hotel
rooms or refugee camps; but also places where a dense network of means of
transport appears, like supermarkets or highways, where people encounter without
personal contact and “communicate [...] wordlessly, through gestures, with an
abstract, unmediated commerce; a world thus surrendered to solitary individuality, to
the fleeting, the temporary and ephemeral” (Augé 1995:78).
However in history, the street, as an example of a non-place, is more than just a
place for movement and circulation despite the rather recent invasion of the
automobile (Lefebvre 2003). In our present day society, we imagine the street as
unwelcoming and use it usually as transit way in order to move from one place to
another. Despite these developments, the street used to serve originally as a
meeting place for people of any different background, due to the streetʼs interconnecting nature. Here movement takes place through which interaction becomes
possible. “In the street, a form of spontaneous theater, I become spectacle and
spectator, and sometimes an actor” (Lefebvre 2003: 18).
Consequences in eliminating the street life would leave behind separation and
segregation (Lefebvre 2003). Originally, “[t]he street is a place to play and learn. The
street is disorder [and t]his disorder is alive. It informs. It surprises” (Lefebvre 2003:
18). Lefebvre illustrates the livelihood in the streets during the middle ages, when
artisans occupied the streets. Producers and sellers of a variety of goods didnʼt only
inhabit the streets for selling. They turned merchandising into a spectacle; it was of
provocative and attractive nature, whereas in our contemporary postcapitalist society,
merchandising became a very passive activity (Lefebvre 2003).
13
5.1 Train Banks Spot Malmö
The Malmö Train Banks Spot (TBS) is basically an extensive tarmac path in between
a railway track and an industrial zone. Both sides of the path are closed in three to
five meter high walls and grids prohibiting every sidestepping. Its impersonal
character and transitory function make it a good example for a non-place, which
inhabitants of the city of Malmö would very unlikely choose to spend their time
socializing.
However, already for several years the skateboard community of Malmö appreciates
this path for its remoteness but at the same time easy access through relative
closeness to the inner city, where they can practice tricks without disturbing any
neighbors. In 2009 the local skaters “started to work and didnʼt stop until there was
100 meters of raw Malmö street” (Skate Malmö 2013: TBS), meaning that using the
Do It Yourself method (DIY) the skaters combined all their forces, experiences and
tools and built concrete ramps, banks and
ledges along the walls of the industrial area.
A number of films (for example Pontus Alvʼs
In
search
of
the
Miraculous)
and
photographs online, in skate magazines or
even at public exhibitions (see fig. 5) prove
that this former non-place turned into an area
around which social activities take place
creating,
group
identity
immediately
connected to the particular place.
Fig. 5: Advertising Poster for Malmö skateboarding
exhibition, Source Skate Malmö.
Citing the words of Jordan Hoffart, professional US-American skateboarder: ”Malmö
is [...] a skateboard wonderland, [...] dudes like Pontus Alv have really shaped the
skate scene and put it on the map for the north american [sic] skate industry to want
14
to come visit. Iʼve always wanted to go and now I finally made it. The spots that I saw
in the video were nothing short of amazing, even better then I had imagined in my
head. TBS is definitely one of my favorite spots, thereʼs nothing like being able to rip
in the straight line and have a literal concrete wave to surf on for 200 feet. Bank to
ledges, bank to wall rides, pole jams, up ledges, down ledges and bank to bank
gaps; itʼs paradise” (Hoffart 2013).
6. Sound art
Before coming to the final conclusion I would like to mention another approach of
representational space. Skateboarders express criticism against dominating forces of
capitalism rather in an unconscious manner. Their motivation to reinterpret the
original functions of architectural edifices is a simple pleasure of skateboarding and
the will of trying out an unlimited number of possibilities using their skateboard as a
tool.
On the other hand sound artists are very aware of the prevailing hierarchy among
natural space and representations of space. While recording the urban soundscape
they are consciously concerned about the different melodies and rhythms produced
by the dominating forces in the city intervening within a natural environment (Galand
2012). Listening to the urban environment attentively can provide a renewing of the
relationship between the body and the space (ibid.).
7. Conclusion
Skateboarders are a rhizomatic social group within the capitalist city, whose activities
consist in reinterpreting micro spaces while criticizing the homogenizing forces in the
urban space. The basis for all misconceptions of space lies in the fragmentation of
space into a variety of academic disciplines, which do not collaborate sufficiently.
Consequently urban decision makers are not able to respond to the interrelating
nature of space, which naturally is a broad network, where order and disorder
complete each other. Skateboard communities, as example for a group of resistance,
are able to evade the domination of conceived space and create representational
spaces of freedom of expression, as it was shown in the case of the Southbank
15
Centre in London. However, due to the marginal position of the skateboard scene,
lived spaces are still not sustainable today, as new plans for representation of
spaces continue to have a destabilizing impact on the existence of the skate cultureʼs
heritage. Concerning the body and the time in regard to space, there is evidence that
skateboarding practices a rich relationship between body, time and urban space, a
phenomenon, which became rare in modern, capitalist society. Skateboarders are
furthermore able to turn non-places into spaces of social exchange as it was done in
Malmö. Altogether the criticism performed by skateboarders give a rich insight into a
better understanding of social space, while they produce space, time, and the self.
Nevertheless, their critic is predominantly of unconscious nature compared to other
social groups, like soundartists. The unconscious nature, of preferring the immediacy
of the present and early future proves a high degree of honesty, which turns the
skateboarders activities, into a good bridge to study the production of space.
Further possibilities of exploration in regard to reappropriation of urban space by
urban
social
formations
are
undoubtedly
provided
by
further
analysis
of
skateboarderʼs activities. The DIY practice, for example, consisting in building
ʻhandmadeʼ obstacles and skateparks within the urban landscape, has existed since
the very beginning of skateboarding. However, a widespread DIY movement
throughout the global skateboard community has developed since rather recent
times. Although in the past few decades more and more city authorities provide
purpose built skateparks, the skaters in Europe and USA seem to be even more
active than ever before in constructing their own obstacles within the urban
environment. A reason for this could be in the skateboarderʼs longing for true
appropriation of space, by using the body actively in a timely uncertain learning
process of construction of space, in order to find their own roots within the
homogenized city.
16
8. References
Borden, I. 2001: Skateboarding, Space and the City; Architecture and the Body.
Bloomsbury.
Borden, I 2013: Interview. Long Live Southbank: The Bigger Picture. Hold Tight
Production. Film. Viewed 2013-12-14 <www.llsb.com>
Daskalaki, M. & Mould, O. 2013: Beyond Urban Subcultures: Urban Subversions as
Rhizomatic Social Formations. International Journal of Urban and Regional
Research. Blackwell Publishing.
Galand, A. 2012: Field Recording – LʼUsage sonore du Monde en 100 Albums. Le
Mot et le Reste.
Hoffard, J 2013: Powell Peralta Europe Tour (Part 1). Accessed 2013-12-16
<http://www.confuzine.com/2013/02/04/powell-peralta-europe-tour-part-1/>
Karsten, L. 2009: From a top-down to a bottom-up urban discourse: (re)constructing
the city in a family-inclusive way. Springer.
Lefebvre, H. 1991: The Production of Space (orig. 1974: La Production de lʼEspace).
Blackwell.
Lefebvre, H. 2003: The Urban Revolution (orig.: 1970 La Révolution
Urbaine).Minesota.
London Evening Standard (LES) 2013: New £1m Skatepark to replace Southbank's
Undercroft? Not interested, say the Protesters. Accessed 2013-12-14
<http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/new-1m-skatepark-to-replace-southbanksundercroft-not-interested-say-the-protesters-8804438.html>
Long Life South Bank 2013: About. Accessed 2013-12-05
<http://www.llsb.com/about/>
Shields, R 1999: Lefebvre, Love and Struggle (orig. 1998). Routledge.
Simmel, G 2004: The Metropolis and Mental Life (orig. 1903 Die Großstädte und das
Geistesleben), in The City Cultures Reader (orig. 2000), p. 12- 19. Routledge.
Skate Malmö 2013: TBS. Accessed 2013-12-16 http://skatemalmo.se/skatespots/tbs/
Soja, E.W. 2000: Postmetropolis – Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Blackwell.
Southbank Centre 1998–2013 : About us. Accessed 2013-12-14 <
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about-us>
SBC 1998-2013: SOUTHBANK CENTRE HISTORY. Accessed 2013-12-14 <
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/about-us/history-and-archive/southbank-centrehistory >
Tafuri, M. 1976: Architecture and Utopia – Design and Capitalist Development (orig.
1973: Progetto e Utopia). The MIT Press.
17
Pictures:
Cover page:
Stecyk, C. n.d.: Picture of Jay Adams. Screenshot from Peralta, S. 2001: Dogtown
and Z-Boys 2001. Film. AOP Production.
Figure 1:
Kwi, S. 2007: 2. Outer Time Invading Inner Space. Accessed, 2013-12-10
<https://ia601207.us.archive.org/24/items/OuterTimeInvadingInnerSpace/2.OuterTim
einvadingInnerSpace.jpg>
Figure 2:
Donat, J. (n. d.) The Hayward Gallery in the early 1970s. RIBA. Accessed 2013-1210 <http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/nov/25/antony-gormleysculpting-south-bank >
Figure 3:
Vans 2013: Vans Team at the legendary Southbank in London. Accessed 2013-1210 : <http://skate.vans.com/news/2013/sep/Watch-Vans-World-Tour-SouthbankDemo-Footage/>
Figure 4:
Skate Malmö 2013: Steppe side (Step it up side) part 2. Accessed: 2013-12-13
<http://skatemalmo.se/skatespots/steppe-side/>
Figure 5:
Skate Malmö 2013: Art exhibition. Accessed 2013-12-16 <http://skatemalmo.se/ultrabowl/art-exhibition/>
18