PLANKING: fresh play in Brisbane City

Planking has been described as 'actively lying down'. It is an absurd play activity, where one sinply lies down in a unfamiliar place. I suppose for me, the absurd fascination of planking and it's success in social media comes down to the juxtaposition of the body in space in a new and unprecedented manner. Andrew day, an influential parkour photographer in Europe, writes about this phenomena in his Master's Thesis. He specifically talks about the importance of the image, the position of the body in relation to space, and the creative positioning and re-interpretation of interaction with space, which although directed towards the filming and photography of parkour, similarly applies to planking. In fact; planking has been reffered to as "Parkour for lazy people".

The planking craze is not new, and has been known in other areas of the world as 'the lying down game' and has been practice for at least a few years as a locative photo-iterative prank. Even earlier it may have been known as playing 'superman' although the locative photo-iterative component may not have been popular until the advent of digital cameras. Mostly planking did not seem to raise the 'ire' of many and planking continued without any notable condemnation. In the last week, the play practice of 'planking' has grown in popularity in Brisbane, since a youth made headlines after he was arrested for alledgedly planking on a police car in Gladstone. The youth was charged with being "Found on Police Establishment Without Lawful Excuse"and will appear in court soon. Quickly social networking sites capitalised on the media activity and network groups developed and quickly gained followings. Some groups even used the oppurtunity to make charitable donations to local groups, such as the guide dogs and Young Care Australia. Not only was this play simply fun, but out of that fun some purely altruist activities began to emerge setting an exciting positivist trend for this play activity! Fun had legs and play was bringing not only psychological benifit to the ciy, but also a very percievable social and (albeit initially rather minor) economic benifit!

In a terrible twise of fate, several days after the popularity explosion of planking, a Gladstone man died in Brisbane, and it was quickly alledged that the man died whilst planking from an apartment balcony at Kangaroo Point. In response; Queensland Police issued a statement reminding 'plankers' to think about the nature of their planks before-hand, reminding practitioners that if pushing their 'planks' to the extreme, they faced being charged with 'un-regulated high risk activities' (under the summary offences act 2005) and 'tresspass' if their 'planks' were too extreme, and posed a risk to public safety. The Victorian police reacted in a similar fashion.

It is important to note, that despite the sensationalist media reporting, the police have not banned or condemned planking. They have condemned planking dangerously at risk to others. It comes down to the individual to consider what is appropriate and innapropriate. Undoubtedly though, deviancy labelling will occur, and some portion of the 'planking community' will react to this labelling with more extreme actions...

Unfortunately planking, unlike parkour, does not have an established discipline and tradition of gradual incremental skill growth and peer supported progression. Instead is seen by some to exist in a competitive fashion, outdooing peers. This may not necessarily be the case. Parkour is seen by non-traceurs as a competitive activity, when it could not be further from the truth, however this does not stop youth who are unfamiliar with the ethos of parkour to act in a certain way which may be unhelpful to the reputation of the play activity.

It will also be interesting to see how the courts interpret the summary offences act if more people are charged. The 'unregulated high risk activity' subsection was specifically drafted to address base jumping in urban areas, but has been attempted to be used against parkour traceurs a few years ago when someone vaulted what is essetnially a seat (although the judge at the time kicked the matter out of court), an amateur builderer climbing a lower wall of suncorp stadium (not the roof, just part of the facade), and more recently against bridge jumpers during the floods earlier this year (which was a pretty stupid move by the jumpers).

EddBE2011 - best paper award

"PLAY in the CITY: Parkour and Architecture" recieved the prize for best paper at the close of the inaugral postgraduate sustainable wellbeing conference. In the last few days I've given two phone interviews and tomorrow I will be interviewed by Phillip Smith live on 612 ABC breakfast radio. It's so encouraging that the research is finding fertile reception.

This week has been very exciting, and a dramatic learning curve for me in many respects.

Thank you very much to Craig Cowled and the organising comittee for the conference at QUT. Thank you also to Mirko Guaralda, my supervisor, for his encouragement and guidance.

SI and Architecture

Flicking through my old diary entries I discovered a summary for what I intended to be part of a university undergrad thesis. I figure if at the very least I can post it here, then I can either move on from it - or actually apply myself to it's realisation:

Since the birth of the SI, cultures and expressions within the built environment have changed dramatically. Sub cultures have developed, independantly of the SI, new systems of revolutionary thought that have become (or have the potential to become) more readily accessable to larger communities and cultural groups. Where the SI had trespass and graffiti, there now exists a plethora of other, more palatable vehicles through which the larger public can challenge their built environment's assumptions and oppression.

Activities identified for the purposes of further investigation include:
Parkour
Skateboarding
Technological Age Graffiti
Guerilla Gardening
Draininge/Vadding

It is proposed that these activities all share some foundational attitudes and methods which enable their effective implementation. All of these groups adopt a peer based, web enhanced network through groups such as facebook and online forums. The Web element relies on contribution by all members of the community to encourage and inspire each other. It is organic and often a pure meritocracy in organisational structure. Spontaneous and self-directed engagement is expected, placing the power of development and change directly in the hands of each individual participating.

as Constant wrote in the exhibition catalogue published by the Haags Gemeetenmuseum, The Hague, 1974;
"The culture ...does not result from isolated activities, from exceptional situations, but from the global activity of the whole world population, every human being being engaged in a dynamic relation with his surroundings. There are no a priori links between anyone. The frequency of each man's movements and the distances he will cover depend on decisions he will make spontaneously, and which he will be able to renounce just as simultaneously. Under these conditions social mobility suggests the image of a kaleidoscopic whole, accentuating sudden unexpected changes -- an image that no longer bears any similarity to the structures of a community life ruled by the principle of utility, whose models of behavior are always the same. In our case, the urban must respond to social mobility, which implies, in relation to the stable town, a more rigorous organization on the macro level, and at the same time a greater flexibility at the micro level, which is that of an infinite complexity. Freedom of creation demands in any case that we depend as little as possible on material contingency. It presupposes, then, a vast network of collective services, more necessary to the population in movement than to the stable population of functional towns."
(from: http://www.notbored.org/new-babylon.html. Accessed 5 April 2009)

An analysis of the contexts surround the developments of these groups would be benificial, beginning to understand the socio/media petri dish which each has developed from, and the communications systems used for community.

It is also important to consider threats to these new methods of free thought and movement, both perceived and real. Certainly a battle of ideals exists between the poles of community freedom and security based authoritarian fear mongering. Certainly in this current security culture the presence of a free spirit is like a breath of fresh air.

Lastly, In contrast to New Babylon's (Constant Nieuwenhuis) unbridled accomodation of hyper-desire and forced revolutionary thought, how can we make fertile the current built environment for new expressions of freedom, whilst exhibiting some sense of social responsibility and reason?


POSTCRIPT
Having said all this... I discovered a quote from Chtcheglov (on wikipedia of all places) which I believe gives some grounding to the despondancy I have felt lately as a result of my derive'(s)

"The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but...) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. And thence the relapse into what is termed ‘ordinary life,’ that is to say, in reality, into ‘petrified life.’ In this regard I now repudiate my Formulary’s propaganda for a continuous dérive. It could be continuous like the poker game in Las Vegas, but only for a certain period, limited to a weekend for some people, to a week as a good average; a month is really pushing it. In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us” (Ivan Chtcheglov, excerpt from a 1963 letter to Michèle Bernstein and Guy Debord, reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #9, p. 38)."

Food for thought.

Peace.

Parkour + Aikido

In a recent bid to cure my curiosity, I engaged in a four week introductory course at Michiharu Mori's Yoshinkan Aikido dojo in West End.
Thankfully there was no "40-year-old-mid-life-crisis-street-fighter-wannabe-martial-art-guru-of-awesome" to be seen within a mile. Aikido proved to me to be a very appreciable martial art, being a non-competitive dscipline, and being very much focussed on values of "harmony", ki, flow and efficiency (minimum effort, maximum effect). It seemed very alien to the marketing of BJJ, Maui Thai and Krav Maga (not to strike these off my list... my actual plan is to try a bit of Capoeria and then move on to try some BJJ, MT, TKD et alia... I know it shows no consistency - but for now I am just curious - I can settle on one thing later :)

I have found both the movements and the vocabulary of Aikido to be much akin to the vocabulary and movements of Parkour; "Flow and Efficiency". Being confident in a movement, being at peace all through the movements, being balanced and using pins, pivots, distribution etalia as opposed to muscle strength to achieve a feat.

I very much enjoyed the experience and plan to return at a later point once I have tasted a few other disciplines...