Tricks, Myths and Markings
Performative Explorations of Gendered Play in Public Urban SpaceA Practice-as-Research Project
I was 16 when I got my first skateboard. My parents bought it for me for my birthday and I spent the day learning to ‘ollie’. Beginning to learn to ‘ollie’ on the carpeted floor of the front room of the house I grew up in seemed perfectly normal and natural to me, and I knew other people who practised like this; tricks were everything, they were the very foundation of skateboarding.
If I were to recount this scenario to early skaters in the 1960s or 70s, they’d probably think this was extremely odd. Not only because at that time the ‘ollie’ hadn’t been invented but also because the origins of skateboarding are rooted in a different kind of practice, and a particular emphasis on flowing.
Returning to skateboarding following a 3-year break, I was surprised to perceive a similar lack of female involvement in skateboarding as when I had first started. I also recognised a similar gendering in other public urban play activities such as rollerblading, BMXing and parkour.
As a 26-year-old (at the time I started the project) and living in a new city, I attempted to integrate myself within the Manchester skate scene, visiting local parks, going on internet forums, watching videos and reading skateboarding publications. I met a number of female skateboarders during this time, going on tour with the all-female Rogue team as a writer/documenter, skating regularly with a woman I befriended through spending hours on the Sidewalk Magazine online forum, tagging along with my boyfriend’s friends who skated, and getting my brother back into skating so that he might accompany me. I visited indoor and outdoor parks up and down the country, but particularly in the North West and within Greater Manchester. I went along to local skateboarding film premiers on my own. I skated on my own in empty car parks.
I felt very aware of my status as a (relatively) mature skateboarder at skateparks and when out in the streets, especially when practising alone. I felt uncomfortable initiating platonic relations with other skaters, avoided skatepark peak-times out of a desire to not be watched too intently or snaked by younger, aggressive skaters. I started discussions about female objectification over the sexualised images of women used by some skate companies in advertisements. I studied skate videos and photographs of skateboarders intensely, in the vain hope that the knowledge of how to perform those tricks might go in to my body through the eyes. Somewhere in the midst of this, I realised I wasn’t having the same kind of experience I had as a teenager; I wasn’t feeling like I was part of a movement that was permissive and open and avoided the kinds of aggressive competitiveness you might expect in more traditional sports.
All this led me to the first research question of this project: how and why might a woman play in public, urban space? Which in turn led to a number of different performative explorations around the idea of transforming skateboarding into some other practice of public urban space, one that might retain some of the fundamental elements of skateboarding – the things that keep pulling me back despite that I’m someone who doesn’t meet many of the standards.
I began by going into town in my own clothes to ‘just play’ but felt after a few outings, that costuming the practice would allow me to be constantly exited from the normative uses of sites. So this progressed on to me costuming myself in reference to popular depictions of ‘Alice’ from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” stories.
Since this decision, which wasn’t carefully considered or aligned to a research imperative, I’ve committed to a process that embraces intuition, not-knowing, following and falling. This process of moving first and thinking later allows me to reflect on my practice as containing knowledge that needs to be unfolded.
The various practice documented on this blog are listed in the ‘categories’ panel on the right. WordPress automatically puts categories into alphabetical order but that’s not my intention so feel free to wander around.
About Me:
I’m an artist based in Manchester and lecturer in performance. I tend to create performance practices rather than performance events, and these are often not made for an intentional or immediately present audience, existing in the form of public intervention or privately sited work. My current projects contribute towards my practice-as-research interests in investigating gendered space, place and movement and notions of skill in performance.
Contact:
daniabulhawa@hotmail.co.uk
Follow @skeeterdani
