* parkour workshop in paris

Parkour (or "art du déplacement") is a french artistic sport making use of urban architectural infrastructures. It is for us a a valuable source of inspiration in terms of creative use of the urban environment. In order to explore potentials for Sonic City to support new kinds of urban interactions and practices, we held a workshop with 3 parkour practitioners (or "traceurs") in Paris, in October 2002.

In the first phase of the workshop, we accompanied the traceurs as they showed us how and where they practiced. In the second part, we engaged a discussion around their personal stories, histories, and lifestyles. Through mapping activities, we explored the rituals of preparation, social relations and organisation, and situations of perceptual and physical engagement with the city. From this, we drew inspiration for developing Sonic City in ways that leverages and complementes both existing and unexpected ways of using the city.

An interesting realisation for us was the evolution and personal adaptation of each workshop participant in their own practice: from mastery of individual moves and personalised sequences, to the appropriation of particular objects or systems of architectural elements in the city. It was the physical urban framework and basic physical rule-sets that enabled creativity, expression, and integration of the practice into their (personal and social) lives in a meaningful way over the long term.

* notes on mapping activity

Location: a street/space in the participant's suburb
Focus: contextual sequences

Description started with a clear drawing to scale of the characteristics of the whole physical environment, everything drawn as a continuous, joined line/shapes – afterwards moving through and use of the aspects of the space were drawn in alongside verbal description. Size, shapes and scale of things (analytic aspects) seem to be important, but as part of a continuous experiential circuit that could continue (off the paper)…

Location: playground in the participant's suburb
Focus: object-oriented continuity

Description was of a confined area meant for 'playing' already. Each object in the environment was carefully described – the fence, gates, trees, even the garbage can was carefully marked. Each object was used and reused for multiple purposes and moves, with an emphasis on mastery of the physical technique in relation to the existing objects as given challenges.

Location: sites within the town of Tours
Focus: technique combinations

While drawing simple shapes, the participant explained the ways in which they accommodated the kinds of moves, with a focus less on continuous movement across/through a space than on exploring (perfecting?) multiple actions within the limits of a small space. Often there are 'breaks' when the participant must to stop and think or walk to the next space. Man-made and natural objects (from walls to tree branches) require different techniques and interesting new combinations.

* notes on group discussion

Spatial situations: practice involves mostly fixed furniture and objects between the buildings, including railings, small wall, air ducts, ramps, traffic posts, fences, stairs; we saw jumps between walls over a ramp, large sculptural air ducts, long ramp (railings and underneath using supports) and a kids' playground.

Physical technique: classic moves are 'saut de chat (cat jump)', 'saut de bras (arm jump)' – they start with these first (learning and as a basis of practice) and then improvise; mostly, they would approach an object, one would try and the other would follow, and sometimes they would repeat it, discuss together, or move on.

Practice: one participant practices diligently 10 hours a week and alone; another practices on the way home from school informally; two of them practice a lot together. Mostly they practice every day (not at night), year round. It is a 'complete' sport in terms of physique and exercise/martial art, concentration, achievement and pride.

Group identity: they recognise other practitioners (strangers) by how they move and walk in the city, rather than a way of dressing or other social code – what defines them is the practice itself, not T-shirts or websites. Parkour is a mode of expression, a way of meeting people (coming to Paris, through the internet etc), though the standards of belonging are defined by level of dedication and accomplishment in practice.