A provocation: move from point A to point B in as straight a line as possible, reconfiguring your body as necessary. Parkour is a movement practice that invites its practitioners to navigate the urban landscape by running, jumping, climbing, and vaulting around, across, and through obstacles encountered in the terrain. Its practitioners move in transgressive ways and in spaces that do not prescribe or condone such movement. Despite the linearity of the provocation offered above, the paths enacted in parkour are often anything but, as the environment unfolding before its practitioners offers multiple trajectories of deviation and play. What might this approach offer for artistic research practices? As artistic researchers, how do we remain open to possible deviations and form dynamic modes of engagement? How can we engage in transgressive acts that challenge the hegemonic structures of neoliberalism, patriarchy, racism, and institutionalization that we exist within? I argue parkour offers a mode of response to the collective crises we face, a fundamental perspectival shift through dynamic transgressive enaction that subvert and reconfigure the very compositions of individual, research, institution we grapple with.

The session is divided into three sections. The first section takes on the provocation above and asks participants to move about the space, encountering the environment as it emerges. The second section includes writing exercises in response to the movement and offers additional provocation through passages from Deleuze and Guattari, Rosi Braidotti, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, and other texts. Participants are encouraged to reflect on their own artistic research practice and how they might remain dynamic with their own work. The remaining time is allotted for discussion where participants share the sensations and thoughts that arise from the session.

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