Giardini Govi is our spot! When parkour meets Genoa

Abstract

This article focuses on the experience of a group of traceurs (people practising parkour) in the urban context of Genoa. It describes a public area of the town – the ‘spot’ most frequently used for training – from the specific point of view of the traceurs. Genoa is made up of different and relatively autonomous public spaces with specific and cultural characters, but parkour originates from the attempt to disrupt and reconfigure the city's institutional framework. Genoese traceurs share some of their orientation with other parkour groups in Europe and North America: they are attempting to define new ways of moving and new meanings for urban spaces and to expand the standard definition of a citizen. However, in the urban environment of Genoa, traceurs have to face diverse forms of opposition to their attempts to define their own pathways through the everyday flow of people, and in the disciplinary gaze of other citizens.

Keywords::

• parkour
• Genoa
• ethnoscape
• augmented reality
• disciplinary gaze

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. About 12 people participate in the weekly training sessions of the group; although men between the ages of 17 and 19 are prevalent, the group includes three people over 30 and four boys aged nine. Furthermore, there is a certain balance between Italians and foreigners, considering that four are from Ecuador, one is Russian, one is Ukrainian and one Romanian.

^2. Synonym for ‘stinginess’, one of the traits most used to define ‘genovesità’. It corresponds to the English idiom ‘to have deep pockets but short arms’.

^3. A used to define the project of the Fascist regime for unification of the city centre and the suburbs.

^4. A TV show of short video clips entitled ‘Tourism in Liguria’ (Liguria is the Italian region of which Genoa is the capital city) had a lot of success nationally. The humour of these clips is based on an overstatement of the ‘traditional’ intolerance of Genoese people towards tourists.

^5. In particular it is the evening ‘movida’ in certain areas of the historical centre that creates conflicts between the young patrons of the bars and the residents, who try to negotiate restrictions with the local institutions such as earlier closing times for clubs.

^6. Recent research (e.g. Queirolo Palmas 2006; Benasso, Cortellesi, and Villa 2010) has shown that the young Genoese's friendship networks tend to be homogeneous in nationality, especially in informal and extra-curricular contexts.

^7. In some cases, devices explicitly aimed at hampering ‘illicit’ urban practices may bring about, as explained by Vivoni (2009), a counter-cultural response that becomes more organised and aware and elaborates counter-actions even at a symbolic level such as the distribution of adhesive letters to be applied to the signs in order to change ‘No skateboarding’ to ‘Know skateboarding’ or ‘Now skateboarding’.

^8. Laurent Piemontesi, recognised as one of the pioneers of this discipline, organises many courses and workshops on parkour, especially in the Milan area.

^9. Close therefore to the configuration of the early cultural studies that Weinzierl and Muggleton (2003), in the introduction to The Post-Subcultures Reader, define as ‘romantic’, in opposition to the more pragmatic approach of post-cultural studies. It is interesting to note how also in different authors (e.g. Daskalaki and Mould, and in this case also the present author, see Benasso and Stagi 2013) one can observe this oscillation between interpretations more orientated to the counterculture and more ‘veiled’ readings in terms of traditional political negotiation.

^10. This represents a self-regulating strategy and not a limit imposed by others.

^11. In a literal sense ‘augmented reality’ is the result of the overlapping of information and further sensorial stimuli compared with those perceivable in the material world through the mediation of digital technologies. This concept also applies, for instance, to the functions of new wearable digital visors such as ‘Google Glass’.

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Sebastiano Benasso

Sebastiano Benasso, PhD in Sociology, was born in Genoa, and is Research Fellow at DISFOR, University of Genoa, Italy, developing various research lines, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The main areas of his research are: biographical transitions, youth studies and styles, lifestyles and cultural consumptions, labour market dynamics, gender studies.