Illuminated paths: Using light to draw the intermovemental stages of skateboarding tricks. Issue 1 (1st April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chittenden, Tara
• Is Part Of: Drawing. Volume 2:Issue 1(2016)
• Page Start: 81
• Page End: 96
• Publication Date: 2017-04-01
• Subjects: Drawing -- Periodicals; 741.05
• DOI: 10.1386/drtp.2.1.81_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2057-0392

Abstract

By interrogating built form and using intuitive and artistic understandings of space to carve out new landscapes, skateboarders demonstrate how urban space can function in alternative ways. This article explores a way of capturing the divergent contours, peaks and valleys of skateboarders' paths through space as a series of drawings that not only map variations of urban landscape, but also act as an expression of individuals' experiential moments in time. My discussion focuses on the work of Buzzy Sullivan, a skateboarder and artist living in Oregon, USA, who shoots long exposure photographs of an LED light-clad skateboard during different skate tricks. In the resulting images the movement of the skateboard appears as a series of drawn light paths, resembling a 3D contour map of an alien terrain. Although these ephemeral light lines have obvious advantages due to their ability to make the sheer variation in contours of movement through space visible, they are reliant on photography for their preservation. Positioned as drawings, the lines of light enable us to visualize how skateboarders navigate environments and provide the DNA strands of each trick as it is being performed. These are drawings about the process of their own creation, acting as a fluid process that awakens new possibilities for sculpting and reading the city. I suggest that Sullivan's images provide a method for research that captures the nuanced 'intermovemental' stages of skateboarding as drawings that help to explain what happens between the board and the ground in a skateboarder's cartographic constitution of place.