Parkour: playing the modern, accelerated city

ABSTRACT

In this article, I argue that parkour can be understood as a way to recapture moments of non-alienated human experience in urban space. I draw on Hartmut Rosa’s theory of temporally caused alienation and Edward Casey´s phenomenological study of place and space. Based on empirical data I describe how the practitioners aren’t indifferent to urban space, but they carry a unique material curiousness and a concrete physical presence wherever they go, thereby enabling an experience of resonance. Even though parkour, as well as other informal sports, is subjected to societal patterns of sportification, acceleration and alienation, it is a good example proving that human beings can transform, for a moment, the most alienated environment, into a place of play.

KEYWORDS:

• parkour
• play
• resonance
• alienation
• sport critique
• sportification

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the audience at IAPS 2018 for constructive and helpful comments and questions that helped develop this article. I want to dedicate it to my supervisor and dear friend Henning Eichberg (1942-2017) who introduced me to Hartmut Rosa’s work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.