Playing with fear: parkour and the mobility of emotion

This article engages debates on emotional geography and non-representational theory by considering fear as a distinctly mobile engagement with our environment. Parkour, or freerunning, has exploded into public consciousness through commercial media representations and films. It is depicted as a spectacular urban sport that either can or cannot be done. Through ethnographic research with groups of parkour practitioners I consider what has been excluded from these representations: the emotions involved in trying, experimenting, and gradually learning to be in places differently. In parkour places are ‘done’ or mobilised in tentative, unsure, ungainly and unfinished ways which can be characterised by a kind of play with architecture. I argue that this play is contingent upon an array of fears, which, rather than being entirely negative, are an important way in which practitioners engage with place. Here fears can manifest differently, not only restricting mobility, but in some cases encouraging imaginative and playful forms of movement. Cet article ouvre des débats sur la géographie émotionnelle et la théorie non-représentationnelle en abordant la peur sous l'angle de l'engagement mobile avec notre environnement. Aujourd'hui, le public est fortement sensibilisé au parkour, qui est une sorte de course libre, par l'intermédiaire de représentations médiatiques commerciales et cinématographiques. Celles-ci le décrivent comme un sport urbain des plus spectaculaires auquel on peut ou ne peut pas se livrer. En reprenant les résultats d'une recherche ethnographique menée auprès de groupes qui s'adonnent au parkour, une série d'éléments écartés de ces représentations sont abordés, dont les émotions suscitées par la tentative, l'expérimentation et, en dernière phase, l'apprentissage d'être dans les lieux de manière différente. Les lieux, dans le parkour, sont «réussis» ou investis de façon provisoire, aléatoire, maladroite et peut être vu comme une expérience ludique de l'architecture. Il est avancé que ce jeu repose sur toutes sortes de peurs qui n'ont pas seulement un effet négatif, mais qui constituent également une voie importante par laquelle les participants établissent un lien avec le lieu. Les peurs se manifestent ainsi de manière différente et constituent autant un obstacle à la mobilité qu'un encouragement, dans certains cas, à des formes de mouvement imaginatif et enjoué. Este artículo entra en debates sobre la geografía afectiva y la teoría no representacional por considerar el miedo como una forma verdaderamente transportable de interactuar con nuestro entorno. El Parkour, o ‘freerunning’, es bien conocido por parte del público gracias a las representaciones y películas comerciales de los medios de comunicación. Es representado como un deporte urbano espectacular que, o se puede, o no se puede hacer. Mediante un estudio etnográfico con practicantes del parkour considero qué ha sido excluido de estas representaciones: las emociones involucradas en el acto de intentar, experimentar y, poco a poco, aprender a estar en un lugar de forma distinta. Los lugares del parkour están ‘hechos’ o movilizados de forma indecisa, insegura, torpe e inacabada, que puede ser caracterizada como un tipo de juego con la arquitectura. Sugiero que este juego depende de toda una serie de temores que, en lugar de ser totalmente negativos, constituyen una manera importante en que los practicantes interactuan con el lugar. Aquí los temores pueden manifestarse de forma distinta, no sólo limitando la movilidad sino, en algunos casos, impulsando formas de moverse que son imaginativas y traviesas. Keywords: fearparkourfreerunningemotional geographymobilityplaceplayKeywords: peurparkourcourse libregéographie émotionnellemobilitélieujouerKeywords: miedoparkourfreerunninggeografía afectivamovilidadlugarjuego Acknowledgements My thanks to all those who shared with me the pleasure and pain of parkour practice. Thanks also to Tim Cresswell for kick starting this research and Pete Merriman, Gareth Hoskins, Samantha Saville, Peter Kraftl and other friends and colleagues for their insightful comments and encouragement on earlier drafts and presentations of this work; and for the feedback of the three anonymous referees. This research was gratefully undertaken with funding from the ESRC. Notes 1 Though I will not dwell on it here, it is interesting to consider how parkour might be understood as a utopian practice. Common to recent work on utopia (see Kraftl Citation2007; Parker, Fournier and Reedy Citation2007), parkour is an ongoing process that can be unsettling in its re-imagination of movement and landscape. 2 During this immersive participation, I practised parkour on a daily basis, with several different groups and individuals, and occasionally on my own. As an observant participant, I kept a research diary of my experiences. I also conducted semi-structured recorded interviews with some traceurs. 3 Talk about one's ‘Way’ in parkour is almost wholly borrowed from Japanese forms of Budo, which prize certain bodily practices and disciplines (archery, martial arts, etc.) which come to possess spiritual significance. While ‘The Way’ in Japanese practices is normally quite prescribed, master to student, in parkour this is much less the case. 4 Parkour practitioners often refer to the philosophy of parkour. This philosophy is espoused variously by different traceurs across the globe, drawing on a variety of cultural references, particularly from what can be broadly identified as Eastern philosophies. 5 During my research I attended a ten-day parkour workshop, run by Tony Wolf as part of the ‘StompingGround’ dance festival in New South Wales. Before the term ‘parkour’ was coined by David Belle, Wolf and others were supplementing their professional stunt work by practising very similar movements under the guise of ‘Urban Shugendo’. Of course, the physical practice of parkour-type movements has been with us in many different incantations, well before the term ‘parkour’ became popularised. 6 Here my vulnerability is very much a condition of my corporeality as with Paul Harrison's (Citation2008) paper. Yet the context is quite different and this is more a type of ‘active’ and even ‘sought after’ vulnerability. 7 ‘Kong vaults, cat leaps, palm spins’ are all loose definitions of types of parkour movements.