Skateboard Video

This book is about skateboard video and experimental ways of thinking about cities. It makes a provocative argument to consider skate video as an archive of the city from below. Here 'below' has a dual meaning. First, below refers to an unofficial archive, a subaltern history of urban space. Second, below refers to the angle from which skateboarders and filmers gaze upon, capture, and consume the cityfrom the ground up. Since taking to the streets in the early 1980s, skateboarding has been captured on film, video tape and digital memory cards, edited into consumable forms and circulated around the world. Videos are objects amenable to ethnographic analysis while also archiving exercises in urban ethnography by their creators. I advocate for taking skate video seriously as a (fragile) archive of the urban backstage, collective memory across time and space, creative urban practice, urban encounters (people-to-people and people-to-object/s), and the globalization of a subculture at oncedelinquent and magnificent.

Fills a gap in existing literature by offering ways to use skate video in the study of skate culture, cities and media Responds to calls to rethink the ways we approach research on cities in both the Global North and Global South Investigates and explores the ever-expanding network of cities favoured for skateboarding across the globe

Autorentext

Duncan McDuie-Ra is Professor in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Newcastle, Australia. His most recent books include: Skateboarding and Urban Landscapes in Asia: Endless Spots (2021), Ceasefire City: Militarism, Capitalism, and Urbanism in Dimapur (2020, co-authored with Dolly Kikon) and Borderland City in New India: Frontier to Gateway (2016).

Inhalt
Chapter 1 Introduction: Archiving the Urban Backstage.- Chapter 2 Archiving Without Archives.- Chapter 3 Archiving Urban Space.- Chapter 4 Archiving Delinquency.- Chapter 5 Archiving Diversity.- Chapter 6 Conclusion.