Tory Mountain

Parkour: Popular Counter-Public or Paradox of Power?

Panel Abstract: This panel seeks to explore the notion of ‘public space’ and its formation in and through complex economic, political and cultural processes. Viewing ‘publics’ essentially as a force field that can generate what Warner calls Poetic world making serving as an alternative politics of culture and teaming it with an understanding of ’space’ that extends from the physical to its more political, moral, even utopic dimensions, we strive to draw together various cultural practices and artifacts as performative models that problematise and challenge this force field and its subversive potential. Drawing from varied political practices, behaviors, discourses and images, each paper uses performance as an epistemological lens to explore creative and political interstices within the public arena and re-locate emerging critical modes of ‘countering’.

The panel comprises of 4 students from Portugal, Canada, Netherlands and India respectively holding different specialisms in performance studies and varied performance practices. In the process of writing our dissertations for the MA in International Performance Research, we’ve encountered a common concern with issues of public space. The PSI Conference 2010 would provide us a platform to discuss our research methods and findings and put them to debate with other scholars.

Mountain’s Abstract: This paper seeks to question the validity of the popular assumption that parkour is a counter-public. Elements of whiteness and heterosexual masculinity identifiable in the practise serve to problematize the notion of counter, and push further this examination of parkour as both a critique and reaffirmation of dominant public interests.