beyond urban subcultures subversions as rhizomatic social formations.pdf

Beyond Urban Subcultures: UrbanSubversions as RhizomaticSocial Formations

MARIA DASKALAKI and OLI MOULD

AbstractThe article discusses what we term urban social formations and expands on prior workthat predominantly examines urban ‘subcultures’ as opposed to the world city paradigmand homogeneous cityscapes. We describe the process of ‘subculturalization’ throughwhich urban social formations, after they have been marginalized and illegalized,become formalized as subcultures and incorporated into the fabric of consumption andprofit making. The article proposes that these ossified moments of crystallized practiceare only part of wider rhizomatic territories that remain open fields for urbanengagement, inviting fluid urban identities and creative states of becoming. The articleconcludes by exploring the challenges and opportunities of conceptualizing urban socialformations as rhizomes.

IntroductionUrban studies literature identifies a multitude of subcultural activities, some of whichhave gained more attention than others, such as skateboarding (Borden, 2001), parkour(Daskalaki et al., 2008; Saville, 2008; Mould, 2009), graffiti (Bloch, 2008; Dickens,2008), urban pranks (Andersson, 2009), yarn bombing (Moore and Prain, 2009) andurban exploration (Ninjalicious, 2005; Garrett, 2010). These studies have proposed thatby engaging with the urban topography in new and innovative ways, these ‘urbansubcultures’ (Fischer, 1975) are extending the functionality of the planners’ originalintentions. In doing so, they redirect and even oppose the predetermined usage of urbanspaces, thereby challenging the homogenization forces of the capitalist city (Pinder,2008; Harvie, 2009).

Nevertheless, reducing urban activities to resistance discourses constitutes them asbounded entities that can only be positioned alongside, or in opposition to, economic andconsumerist tendencies inherent in the so-called ‘world city paradigm’ (Sassen, 2009).This contributes to what we call a ‘subculturalization’ process and reinforces capitaliststandardization forces through a totalizing urban discourse. This article argues that theformation, existence and practice of urban activities are rhizomatic and, as such, theiridentification becomes not the antipode of a homogeneous cityscape, but a fluid,emerging process. Accordingly, we have chosen to refer to these activities not assubcultures but as ‘urban social formations’ (hereafter USFs). Instead of discussing USFsas isolated groups at the periphery of mainstream cultural activity (the ‘other’), that is,

We would like to thank the three anonymous IJURR reviewers of our article for their very detailed andconstructive feedback.

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Volume 37.1 January 2013 1–18 International Journal of Urban and Regional ResearchDOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01198.x

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in terms of traditional definitions of subcultures (Clarke, 1981; Bennett, 1999), weexplore them as rhizomes (Jung, 1963; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) — fluid groups thatremain scattered temporary formations, moving between different urban sites ofexpression. This nomadic orientation invites multiple, ephemeral, but above all,rhizomatic membership to the city that allows occasional members to write their ownimmanent urban stories, rather than some observational meta-narrative of capitalism,subculture or other cultural hegemony.

Some USFs (such as skateboarding or urban exploration) have already becomearenas in which political discourses and practices have been explored (Borden, 2001;Garrett, 2010). We contribute to this by suggesting that USFs, despite instances ofsubculturalization, remain in flux. And it is this flux that is of interest, as it constitutes thein-between, those territorialities that are as of yet unimagined. In this sense, it is theimmanent stories of USFs that are considered crucial to develop and reflect upon, thosethat are open, unintended and intangible, all characteristics of the rhizome. By embracingthe experiences ‘yet to come’ (Bloch, 1986; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), we believeUSFs maintain their capacity for imagination, experimentation and creativity and,through that, their role as political transformative agents within contemporary cityscapes.

In arguing for a rhizomatic analysis of urban subcultural activity, the article makesthree pointed conceptual arguments. The first explains how emerging urban practices areconstructed as oppositional and how this contributes to the subculturalization process.The second explores the concept of subculturalization as a two-stage appropriationprocess. Initially, USFs are enacted as the ‘other’ through illegalization andmarginalization (the process of ‘othering’). Then, homogenization forces proceed toformalize them and incorporate them as part of dominant practices by re-branding themas cultural products subjugated to commercialization processes within a rationallybounded (and tightly regulated) urban landscape (the process of ‘accruing’). Havingexplained the way in which subculturalization frames and restricts both the definition andfunction of USFs, in the third part of the article, the rhizomatic qualities of theseformations are discussed. In particular, the principles (connectivity, heterogeneity,multiplicity, asignifying rupture, cartography and decalcomania) of the rhizome(Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) are engaged to illustrate how USFs’ fluid identities are ina constant state of flux owing to their permeability, creating new territories ofengagement. By opening up the analysis to those areas of collaboration, connectivity andthe in-between, new relations and forms of social engagement then become possible,which do not materialize as another ‘other’, but as urban moments (Amin and Thrift,2002) and happenings (Kirby and Dine, 1965; Kaprow, 2003). The final part of thearticle acknowledges the challenges of a rhizomatic analysis of USFs, reflecting uponthe political parameters of their urban practice and, at the same time, highlightingthe opportunities presented when viewing USFs as platforms for transformativecollaborative engagements.

Homogenization of cityscapes and oppositional urban activitiesArguably, culturally and economically, cities (particularly in the global North) progressalong seemingly homogeneous paths, with amenities, cultural provisions and evenarchitecture showing increasing signs of convergence (Jones, 2009; Sassen, 2009),creating an environment engineered for economic production and cultural consumption.To echo Bauman (1998) and others (Harvey, 1978; Mitchell, 2003) the world city hasbecome a homogenized consumption space where the built environment ‘both expandsand expends capital’ (Cuthbert, 2003: 29). According to these views, global forms ofmass consumption (Harvey, 1989) increasingly assist in the formation of non-places(Augé, 1995) that foster loss of identity and disorientation. However, while thesearguments suggest that the homogenizing effects of global culture create familiar

2 Maria Daskalaki and Oli Mould

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37.1© 2012 Urban Research Publications Limited

cityscapes, local cultural practices (including USFs) emerge as distributed and variedurban movements, constructing what Appadurai (1995) noted to be translocal practiceterritories that are characterized by differentiation and heterogeneity.

Initially, the Situationists, through their concept of dérive (‘moving around without agoal’; Debord, 1996 [1958]), promoted an attitude of creative readiness and perpetualopposition to the Spectacle (Fenton, 2005; Harold, 2007). Similarly, the Surrealistmovement presented a critique of the architects’ and planners’ homogenizing topographythat eliminates the city’s surprising ‘detours’ (Breton, 1924). Along the same lines, whendiscussing skateboarding, Borden (2001) explains how, under the Queen Elizabeth Hallon the South Bank in London, many skateboarders attempt to separate themselves frommainstream cultural groups. They strive to be oppositional, irrational in organization,ambiguous in constitution and independently creative, inhabiting a space wherearchitecture is enacted.

Likewise, parkour has received significant media and public attention in recent yearsowing to its spectacular movement; the documentaries Jump London (2003) and thenJump Britain (2005) brought parkour closer to mainstream audiences by portraying it asa spectacular urban practice (Shahani, 2008). This ‘free-flowing’ activity is a ‘sociallysymbolic act, a form of resistance to cityscapes that alienate, restrict and subjugate’(Daskalaki et al., 2008: 57). These discourses in the literature recognize parkour as asubversive and oppositional art form and traceurs (those who partake in parkour) asheroic performers who reclaim subjectivity and agency through transcendence of thepredetermined urban path.

A New York City-based prankster group, Improv Everywhere, has also been seen asa group that conducts social pranks to (re-)appropriate various public sites from citysquares and corporate megastores to public transportation spaces. It aspires to makeinteresting and positive experiences for people in spaces that do not usually providesuch experiences, thereby enacting an urban dramaturgy that subverts public places(Andersson, 2009). Therefore, some of the aforementioned practices do represent or evenpromote anti-capitalist positions outside the world city paradigm; that is, they adopt anoppositional character that constructs them as the ‘other’ on the margins of capitalistcities’ cultural life.Yet city officialdom, attempting to manage these practices, formalizesthem via prohibition and illegalization. This formalized ‘misconduct’ attracts the‘outsider’ city skater (for example), yet at the same time it invites marketing andadvertising organizations, which take profit from these ‘rebellious’ cultural images.Thus, some USFs use appropriation to actively resist capitalist control; yet appropriationalso governs corporate marketing and when used to infiltrate USFs, it makes themsusceptible to commercial exploitation and profit (Harold, 2007).

Hence, as a result of corporate appropriation, urban pranks, or the more collectiveform of ‘flash-mobbing’ (Wasik, 2006), have gradually entered the commercialconsciousness through commercial activities such as advertising campaigns (forexample, mobile phone providers such as T-mobile in the UK). Another example is theWorld Freerun Championships held at the Roundhouse in Camden, London in 2008, anevent sponsored by Barclaycard. There are arguments that suggest that free running is amore commercialized form of parkour (see Angel, 2011), and as such free running couldbe the term for the ‘accrued’ or subculturalized version of parkour. The presence of alarge multinational corporation as a sponsor of a global event that consists of a‘subcultural’ activity exemplifies how agents of capital accumulation have ‘accrued’ theact of parkour into the profit-making process.

As we shall explain in detail in the section that follows, after the identification of USFsas the ‘other’ (phase one), capitalist strategies gradually embed them, ‘accruing’ themas packaged subcultures from which profit can be made (phase two). Clearly, delimitingthis phenomenon into a subculturalization process with two distinct phases perhapsinsinuates that there is an overt agenda that is somehow imbued into the world cityparadigm. It is important to note that we do not claim this; subculturalization is rathera messy and non-sequential process that is symptomatic of totalizing ordering and

Urban subcultures and subversive social formations 3


structuring of modern neoliberal city-making processes (Harvey, 1989). The decision toemploy this process aids the description of how inherently rhizomatic expressions(USFs, in our case) that open up possibility and new fields of urban engagement can bere-constructed or reduced to subcultures by several institutional forces (corporations,media or online communities).

In terms of methodology we followed an ethnographic paradigm (Geertz; 1973;Clifford and Marcus, 1986; van Maanen, 1988; Hammersley and Atkinson, 1995;Prus, 1996), a qualitative research approach that explores individual or collectivesubjectivities. In similar ethnographic work, the researchers seek out, identify andembed themselves in the communities that they research (Bennett and Khan-Harris,2004; Garrett, 2011a). However, we, in a ‘flânerie’ way, encountered our participantsand registered their activities and engagements as they were performed across variousspaces and places in the city (Stubbs, 2002; Lugo, 2010; Kramer and Short, 2011). Insome cases as observers, and in others as participant observers, we witnessed their actof formation and transformation as various urban happenings unfolded. In this article,we draw upon this ongoing research and include examples that illustrate planned orspontaneous encounters with those practicing parkour, urban exploration, urban pranks,yarn bombing and other USFs. Specifically, we describe our direct involvement withthe group Parkour Generations (n.d.) and their activities in London and elsewhere,unstructured discussions with the Favela Painting group in Rio de Janeiro and urbanexplorers in the UK. We also employ observations of projects, analysis of materialsfrom films, online social networks and other events such as the presentation of theMountain Dwellings project to the Architecture Foundation (AF) and the Word FreerunChampionships in London.

Subculturalization of urban social formations:othering and accruingAccording to de Certeau (1974: 100) ‘one can analyse the microbe-like, singular andplural practice which an urbanistic system was supposed to administer and suppress, butwhich have outlived its decay; one can follow the swarming procedures that, far frombeing regulated or eliminated by panoptic administration, have reinforced themselves ina proliferating illegitimacy’. USFs can be attributed to this mindset, as they often situncomfortably with city authorities and in many cases are marginalized or prohibitedaltogether (or as de Certeau notes, administered and suppressed). Cities are awash withartefacts that prohibit or attempt to restrict the performing of activities that use a buildingor public space in a way it was not intended. ‘No skating’ or ‘Those who undertakeparkour-like activities on these premises will be prosecuted’ signs can be found in manycities across the globe. Other specific examples include the process of ‘knobbing’, wheresmall metal knobs are placed at regular intervals along smooth granite or metal blocks inorder to stop skateboarders or urban trail riders using that particular urban artefact.

Those who manage these places are marginalizing USFs, illegalizing them andreinforcing the building’s or urban space’s original intent. In some cases, theirprohibition is based on legitimate concerns about the safety of individuals who wouldseek to partake in the activity, and indeed of any potential spectators or passers-by.Nevertheless, whether the reasoning is based on safety concerns or protection ofproperty, it remains a fact that city officialdom displaces these activities, therebyrejecting (or ‘othering’) them. This creates a binary logic of urban cultural practices withofficial and formulaic processes on the one hand, and anarchic, subversive andnon-structural processes on the other, causing an inevitable schism. Instead of openingspaces to include and encourage possibility, USFs are incorporated into the capitalistframework as the ‘other’, as groups outside the fabric of the city that are initiallyrendered ineffectual, unproductive and unprofitable.



Yet the social aspect of many of these urban subversions means that often they willcongregate into groups.1 The presence of a community of participants, like otherepistemic communities in economic and societal groups, inevitably creates a set ofpractices that are gradually formalized and adhered to by others (Lave and Wenger, 1991;Knorr-Cetina, 2001). Internet and communication technologies further facilitate theformalization process through dissemination (for example, tutorial videos and forums).Subsequently, what starts out as a group of friends climbing on walls can turn into aglobal phenomenon over the course of a few years, as was the case with the emergenceof parkour (see Mould, 2009). Furthermore, Borden (2001: 137) argues the oppositionalnature of a skateboarders’ subculture status to conventional codes of behaviour, that is,‘groups such as the family which is a clear symptom of a set of alternative urbanpractices becoming more solidified as a formalized urban subculture’.

Belonging to a subculture means that members adhere to a particular identity (forexample, that of the ‘skateboarder’, ‘traceur’, ‘urban explorer’ or ‘graffiti artist’) andoften they will have the need to be recognized by others as well as by members of theirparticular community. This crucially contributes to the ‘accruing’ phase of the process,for two distinct reasons. First, it encourages boundaries around a particular group ofpeople through the need to follow certain codes and practices. For example, the USFknown as ‘yarn bombing’ involves people knitting paraphernalia for bland and sterileurban artefacts such as drainpipes, lamp-posts and trees. They may start out byexperimenting with a range of exhibitions using knitted items, but as they continue todevelop their ‘art’, they develop sophisticated techniques. Other people wanting to jointhe group now need to enter a period of training or initiation in order to participate (seethe yarn-bombing self-professed DIY manual by Moore and Prain, 2009).

Secondly, the identification and formalization of subcultural boundaries or particulartrends/fashions allows individuals, as members of a particular subculture, to be targetedby advertisers for profit. For example, particular items of clothing become popularamong skateboarders, enabling the introduction and eventual prevalence of particularclothing brands. In free running, there are certain dress codes that dominate (i.e. baggytracksuit bottoms and a vest singlet) and hence these can be styled, branded and sold totraceurs. Another marker of this process is the appearance of ‘heroic’ individuals withinparticular subcultures, who are often sponsored by major brands and companies witha vested interest in selling clothing or items within that subculture. For example,Tony Hawk, a skateboarding ‘superstar’, is sponsored by Quicksilver, a company thatmanufactures skateboarding apparel and paraphernalia; Sebastien Foucan, one of thefounders of parkour, is sponsored by Nike and often appears in advertisements for thecompany as well as in Hollywood blockbusters. Digitization processes also encouragethe subculturalization of particular groups: American Parkour not only sells productsonline, but also promotes a ‘branch’ of parkour which is doing ‘professional work likecorporate event performances, tours,television and movie stunt work’ (AmericanParkour, n.d.).

Thus, the crystallization of these practices into a coherent and self-regulatedactivity makes them more amenable to profiteering; once a practice can be labelled andformalized, it can be utilized for profit. Consequential commercialization reconfigurescrystallized practices into money-making enterprises, either by sponsorship (as with thecase of the World Freerun Championships, highlighted above), tight regulation, dilutionof content, or a ‘plug-in’ to the city’s capitalist accumulation and cultural consumption,re-producing them as ‘new’ (sometimes labelling them as ‘edgy’, ‘new wave’ or‘underground art’).

Inevitably, othering and accruing are enacting nuanced changes in the workings ofcapitalism itself. For example, in order to establish platforms of control, find new

1 There are of course, exceptions, for example, the individuality of the work of Banksy, the UK-basedgraffiti artist-cum-activist (Dickens, 2008).



cultures for appropriation and maintain hegemony, official institutions and regulators(such as corporations and planners) adapt to exploit opportunities that expand theirconsumption base and maximize profit. In other words, the world city making processstarts including previously marginalized activities that have now become productivethrough their embeddedness into regulated and formalized platforms of social activity.

However, this process is uneven and not ubiquitous in cities across the world. We havediscussed this process as part of the world city paradigm, yet there are nuances of thesubculturalization process that enact geographical differences, as the severity of themarginalization phase varies markedly from one city to another. Cities of the globalSouth, for example, tend to have less surveillance techniques (for example, less CCTVand less official prohibition signage — see Norris et al., 2004) and so marginalization ofUSFs is effected accordingly. Given that urban governance structures in northern Europeand in North America are more stringent, the subculturalization process occurs more‘concretely’ than in cities that are more tolerant to ‘alternative’ behaviour. This is part ofa much wider debate surrounding the validity of ‘world’ cities from more disadvantagedparts of the globe (Robinson, 2005) and it would not be conducive to this article’sargument to revisit it here. Suffice to say that we recognize that cities will officiate USFsdifferently, and the subculturalization process described above will not be uniform acrossall cities. For example, not surprisingly, despite the fact that parkour is now practiced inalmost every country around the world, the first World Freerun Championships wereorganized in the West and, more interestingly, were sponsored by a financial institution.

Nevertheless, the transition of parkour from a marginalized USF to a commercialactivity is not a linear process, and the presence of Barclaycard as a sponsor of thechampionships is merely one instance of accruing. There will still be individuals whocontinue to be marginalized when conducting parkour, and while it may be ‘acceptable’in the arena of world championships sponsored by a multinational banking firm, suchacceptance occurs alongside marginalization. In other words, the subculturalizationprocess does not signal the end of USFs’ evolution as social practices with a potentiallytransformative role. The processes of othering and accruing are illustrative of a particularset of processes that exist within a much more heterogeneous, multiplicitous and openurban realm. While the city may evolve to incorporate a wider variety of experiences,other mechanisms of control still persist, guiding the subculturalization of divergenceand ambiguity. At the same time, as the section that follows will explain, other forms ofurban expression and social engagement arise owing to, or independently of, theprocesses of subculturalization. By focusing on some examples of rhizomatic presencein contemporary cityscapes, we propose and invite future studies that will positionurban cultural activity less as distinct subcultures and more as open social formationsthat exist in the immanent temporarity before, during and after (or in spite of) thesubculturalization process and offer opportunities for creative and transformativecollaborative engagements.

Urban social formations as rhizomesFrom Plato’s Republic to Badiou’s (2000) theory of the event, there have been a myriadapproaches to attempt to comprehend the way in which urban activity is organized (Doeland Smith, 2010). One concept that has gained a great deal of traction in recent literaturehas been that of the rhizome. First articulated by Carl Jung, the rhizome was used as ametaphor for life itself. He suggests that:

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible,hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer . . . Whatwe see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains (Jung, 1963: 4).

However, it was when utilized by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) in A Thousand Plateausthat the rhizome became more prevalent in social theory. In describing Amsterdam



as ‘a city entirely without roots, a rhizome-city’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 15),the metaphorical vernacular of the rhizome and the rejection of ‘arborescentculture’ percolated urban studies, with Smith (2003: 580) arguing that ‘analogous toDeleuze’s rhizome, city networks are in constant movement, undergoing a series oftransformations, translations, and traductions that defy capture by . . . exclusionarydualistic thinking’. In describing city networks, rather than a singular city, Smithemphasizes how the rhizome allows for a conceptualization of cities that is not focusedon dualities, but on multiplicities. This ethos resonates with this article: the rhizome isthe alternative to the dualism of capitalist versus subversive practices within cities,the recognition of the multiplicitous connections that a rhizomatic reading of the cityaffords.

Similar articulations of urbanity include ‘cyborg urbanization’ (Gandy, 2005),whereby the city is seen as an amorphous amalgamation, and a ‘radical fusion of humanand technology’ (ibid.: 41). He also notes that ‘the organic metaphor of the “rhizome” isdeployed in distinction to “arborescent” conceptions of cities as hierarchical structures’(ibid.: 30). Along these lines, prior literature framed USFs as arborescent structures thatwill either be subjected to the two stages of subculturalization despite their strugglesto remain different and revolutionary (for example, graffiti — see Lachmann, 1988;Tadai, 2007) or will persistently try to resist homogenization by ‘protecting’ theiractivity’s status as illegitimate (such as base jumping from skyscrapers, showcased inthe Channel 4 documentary, The Men Who Jump off Buildings, 2010). A politicalimplication of viewing a USF as a ‘tree’ and not part of an ‘organic metaphor’ (to useGandy’s words) is the perpetuation and preservation of central authority regimes and/orstate control.

Nevertheless, according to Deleuze and Guattari (1987), arborescent structures, whichresemble a ‘tree’, are only a temporary crystallization of an ongoing rhizomatic process.Thus, since USFs are rhizomes, they are also part of a fluid system of connections andtensions, changes and flows that constantly transform the mode of their political activity,constructing new platforms for urban engagement. Indeed, the rhizome moves; it is fastbut it can also slow down, even becoming static, acquiring ‘roots’ and resemblingtree-like structures. Yet, it is its desire to move that makes the rhizome constantlyunsettled, unpredictable and heterogeneous. So the rhizome is not the opposite of thetree; it exists alongside it and sometimes because of it. This has implications for thepolitical role of USFs in contemporary urban environments, upon which we reflect inthe next subsection. In particular, by discussing the six principles of the rhizome,namely connection, heterogeneity, multiplicity, asignifying rupture, cartography anddecalcomania (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) in relation to specific urban engagements,we demonstrate that USFs are inherently rhizomatic and, as such, are significant agentsof creative urban collaborations and transformations.

USFs and the six rhizomatic principles

To begin with, USFs build connections and form assemblages (connection andheterogeneity — the first and second principles of the rhizome) with seemingly unrelatedcommunities. ‘A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains,organisations of power, and circumstances relevant to the arts, sciences, and socialstruggles’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 7). Take, for example, the collaboration betweentraceurs and residents’ groups in London and graffiti artists and favela residents in Rio deJaneiro, who transformed their lived space by painting the facades of their houses (seeFigure 1). Both represent unexpected and spontaneous points of contact and exchange,reflecting the rhizomes’ heterogeneity and demonstrating the capacity for intriguing newurban action, forms of interaction, engagement and creativity. These diverse almosta-centred and anti-hierarchical heterogeneous events bring together activities andcommunities that are ostensibly unconnected.



Parkour Generations, a London-based traceur group, is a case in point; it has beenwidely involved with local communities and school children, an association that resultedin the reformulation of the physical education curriculum and a change in communityinitiatives. The same group has also been involved in workshops with the EnglishNational Ballet and their learning programme, called ‘Be Engaged’, which provided ‘agateway into the world of ballet, connecting young people and communities to artisticpractice and engaging them in a range of inspirational and high quality participatoryactivities’ (Parkour Generations, n.d.). Also, parkour is being employed to promotesports events, including the Royal Parks Half Marathon in 2008, the Youth Sports Trust,a nationwide project in the UK, and the London Olympics 2012 (ibid.). Thisdemonstrates traceurs’ potential for intriguing new urban action through heterogeneousengagement. Parkour’s rhizomatic nature, instead of predetermining the outcomesof urban interactions, can lead to spontaneous happenings or ephemeral encountersthat may break from the chain of transformations to become independent practiceterritories.

In the same way, the parkour-inspired film My Playground ( (Kasparworks, 2010)documents how architects, communities, planners and traceurs (the local group calledTeam Jiyo) came together to explore and create Mountain Dwellings (a residentialbuilding in the Ørestad district of Copenhagen), another example of fluid rhizomaticsocial processes starting to appear in more inclusive and heterogeneous urban contexts.Also, in Parkour SignWear the City (Marketou, 2009), female traceurs in NewYork worespecially designed costumes to participate in an art project that brought art, communityand public performance together in an innovative rediscovery of the city’s 14th Street.2

In the Mountain Dwellings project, in a similar fashion, traceurs assembled withplanners, architects and communities, opening up several possibilities which, in thisparticular case, resulted in a more participative, community-driven construction project.We regard these collaborations as indicative of new territories that emerge and offerpossibilities for imagining a new set of social relations and a context for social change(see Figure 2).

2 From an interview with artist Jenny Marketou, 2011, also see http://www.jennymarketou.com/recent12.html (accessed 13 July 2011).

Figure 1 Favela painting project, Dona Marta, Rio de Janeiro, 2010 (photo by Miguel Imasand Katarzyna Kosmala, reproduced by permission of Dr. Miguel Imas)



In the third principle of the rhizome (multiplicity), two or more different urbanpractices or communities interact to form a multiplicity (that is, a unity that is multiplein itself) that continuously self-differs and, by transcending its own boundaries, bringsabout newness. However, alongside these urban multiplicities, crystallized subculturesmay also exist. ‘[Does] not a multiplicity have strata upon which unifications andtotalizations, massifications, mimetic mechanisms, signifying power takeovers, andsubjective attributions take roots?’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 13). Indeed, skate parksand the ‘accommodation of skaters in the city’ (subculturalization of skateboarding) didnot signal the end of street skateboarding (Borden, 2001; Howel, 2008). As Chiu (2009:40) suggests, ‘even in the face of a high degree of social control from authoritiesand citizens, skaters continue to appropriate streets, sidewalks, and plazas forself-representation and cultural expression, claiming their right to the city’. Similarly, theemergence of variants such as skatebikes, skatecycles, hardcourt bike polo, urbanslacklining, subway skating and street or train surfing demonstrates how evencrystallized USFs inspire and transform into original urban activities that ‘write’ theirown history, underlining values, associations and political agendas.

Likewise, free running and parkour communities co-exist, yet with differing activitiesand ethos. On the one hand, parkour is seen as the original technique that embodies theoriginal philosophy of efficiency of movement (getting from point A to point B as quicklyand efficiently as possible). On the other hand, free running, a more commercializedform of parkour, promotes spectacular movements and stunts and hence becomes moresusceptible to commercialization (and, following that, accruing). The co-existence ofparkour and free running, the former adjusting its identity and characteristics in responseto the dilution of the latter, demonstrates that the activity itself is not static but evolvesat times in a non-linear, non-progressive manner. So, unlike the roots of trees, therhizome can connect any multiple points of differing characteristics and traits (Deleuze,1994). The existence of trees (various ‘accrued’ parkour subcultures, for example) doesnot point towards the cessation of evolution; to take the wisdom of the plants: even whenthey have roots, there is always an outside where they form a rhizome with somethingelse’ (ibid.: 11).

Therefore, we suggest that, despite instances of subculturalization, USFs constantlyextend towards and link with ‘something else’, proliferating their multiplicity byextending connections to other multiplicities. Ephemeral groupings emerge from thiscontinuous evolution process. The production of the film My Playground (2010) is linkedto a chain of transformations, as it moves across different spaces, spurring otherconnections, such as online video-sharing sites and ‘City as playground’, the Bjarke

Figure 2 Parkour SignWare the City, 2011 (photos by author and Jenny Marketou,reproduced in composite by permission of Jenny Marketou)



Ingels Group of architects’ membership in the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale,3 and theconstruction of the Shanghai Pavilion in China (Kucharel, 2009). The film may haveacquired ‘roots’, yet parts of it, which remain ‘outside’ the ordering system, formmultiplicities and becomings, enabling potentialities for future transformations into yetunimagined realms of social practice.

Hence, while some groups may become part of more solidified and appropriatedactivity (such as free running), new groups and, more importantly, possibilities andpotential spaces for new, different groups emerge. This persistence of the rhizomaticprocess can be attributed to the horizontal and trans-species connections (collaborationsor new formations) that USFs can shape. By remaining largely decentred and distributed,the rhizome does not become any less of a rhizome when it is severely ruptured(asignifying rupture — the fourth principle of the rhizome). Rupturing of a part of thecomplex cannot destroy the complex as a whole. So crystallization of USFs (such as freerunning, skate and parkour parks, special clothing, TV commercials, and so on) can beseen as local ruptures, which, however seismic in their occurrence, do not destroy theongoing process of becoming, a key concept in understanding Deleuzian rupture.

The USF of train surfing, a common way of avoiding the cost of train travel in India,Indonesia and South Africa, became popular as a subculture in Germany in the 1990s(S-Bahn surfing). It resurfaced with the ‘trainrider’ in 2005 and more recently, gainedpopularity in Russia and the UK, with the London Underground publishing a campaignagainst ‘tube surfing’. Train surfing (TS), despite its name relating it to wave surfing, is aUSF that is in a similar stratum as parkour (P) or skateboarding (S) — sometimes referredto as ‘train parkour’— as it appropriates the train (instead of buildings and streets) to movein space and express an alternative engagement with the human body. That is, parkour andskateboarding effect becoming-TS. Yet they do so without giving up being P or S. Theycontinue to be P or S, yet they become TS without transforming into TS themselves.

Clearly some USFs are more open than others to connections, with more commercialmultiplicities such as TV commercials and special clothing retailers, and perceive thatthis kind of rupture is possibly inconsequential. This makes them more susceptible tocrystallization and commercialization, allowing local ruptures to control the process.This is further evidence of the diverse rhizomatic patterns that characterize USFs and thedifferential processes of transformation that they undergo. Nevertheless, theheterogeneous elements that reinforce the rhizomatic transformation of some USFsremain decentred yet connected, caught up in one another:

Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome. It could be said that the orchidimitates the wasp, reproducing the image in a signifying fashion (mimesis, mimicry, lure, etc.).But this is true only on the level of the strata . . . At the same time, something else entirely isgoing on: not imitation at all but a capture of code, surplus value of code, an increase invalence, a veritable becoming, a becoming-wasp of the orchid and a becoming-orchid of thewasp (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 9).

The orchid de-territorializes its plant-ness by rendering itself in the tracing of the wasp.The wasp, in turn, also makes a claim on the image, re-territorializing it. Simultaneously,the wasp is de-territorialized by the orchid, ‘becoming a piece in the orchid’sreproductive apparatus’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987:9). To further illustrate the conceptof becoming and the principle of asignifying rupture, let us take parkour andperformance arts. In a play called Next Door at the Cockpit Theatre in London, traceursactually participated in the performance of the play, transforming parkour and theatre aspractices, constituting a new genre of theatre, or potentially a new art form. The fact thatthere is the ability to connect parkour (P) to an art form, the theatre (T), demonstrates thatthe two heterogeneous elements are linked by a rupture between them, creating a new

3 From an interview with an architects’ representative of the Bjarke Ingels Group at ArchitectureFoundation, London, 2009.



territory (P-T), which cannot be determined by signifying strata, but which forms anotherrhizome. When P affects a becoming-T, P does not give up being P. It continues to be P,yet it becomes T without transforming into T itself. It is a simultaneous transformationthat changes P as a practice, but more importantly invites us to look at theatricalperformance as a spontaneous intersection with the urban environment. In this respect, anew territory emerges and enables this becoming, realizing the transformative potentialof both theatre and parkour (until then unrealized), inviting new nodes of the rhizome. Itis this immanent capacity for transformative action that we emphasize in our analysis ofrhizomatic USFs in this article.

This immanent capacity of USFs is maintained by what remains ‘outside’ and notthrough what becomes the ‘root’ of a tree: by mapping USFs from any point of entry intoan invisible territory (cartography and decalcomania — the fifth and sixth principles of therhizome), we are ‘constructing a real that is yet to come’(Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 42):

What distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely orientated towardsexperimentation in contact with the real . . . The map is open and connectable in all of itsdimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn,reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or socialformation (ibid.: 12).

Cartography, in other words, is a strategy for navigating a rhizomatic structure, and notfor transferring the qualities of one formation to another in an attempt to represent,appropriate and ossify the territory that emerges (in the example above, to crystallize aP-T territory). Through mapping, USFs engage in a process of constant monitoring andtesting, assessing and adjusting the map. This encourages decalcomanic happenings,which are points of ‘exile where it is possible that something finally might happen’(Badiou, 2000: 84–5). Take, for example, the computer game Assassin’s Creed, which isset in ancient Jerusalem (now the Old City). A community of traceurs recreated imageryfrom the game in the physical space of the Old City, adjusting the map and re-relating(not re-creating) virtual and corporeal experiences. Pressing virtual (the computer gameimagery) and non-virtual patterns (the Old City) together is a rhizomatic process ofdecalcomania that leads to the awakening of new formations through continuousnegotiation with their contexts.4 It entails a process of continuous experimentation thatenables the identification of blockages and silences found in the previously knownterritories, in this case the Old City and the computer game imagery.

Undeniably, there is a risk of the map conforming to the tracing, thus sustaining andreplicating the pre-existing concepts and structures and blockages. Take, for example, thevulnerability of virtual parkour to escape appropriation through the computer gamemarket. This vulnerability to replication infiltrates the new nodes that emerge (virtualparkour) and potentially the new formations that materialize, producing tracings ratherthan maps. Yet this, as already suggested, demonstrates USFs’ diverse patterns ofbecoming and does not signal the end of a rhizomatic process, but an extension of it.

In the case of the game, these blockages or silences could be attributed to the lack ofcorporeal experience of place by the video game players or the absence of the unexpectedthat characterizes online gaming platforms. Nevertheless, the re-enactment of movementin the physical world, along with the possibilities brought about for immanentconnections, signal new ways of relating for different groups and between groups and thebuilt environment. Parkour communities around the world physically gathered in the OldCity to carry out a corporeal reproduction of the game’s choreography and re-lay the mapof a new virtual-corporeal social formation, one that assembled in the Old City ofJerusalem. In this formation, the affective dimensions embedded in the game wereexpanded from simply virtual bodily impressions to actual corporeal experiences.

4 Decalcomania is a surrealist technique developed by Max Ernst and others, in which ink or paint isplaced between two sheets of paper or glass; the outcome maps the propensity of the encounter.



Indeed, this decalcomanic encounter offered an opportunity to explore hiddenrhizomatic and boundary-crossing potentialities of video game communities, which cancreate not only ‘virtual’ affect, but also inspire embodied experiences through engagingwith USFs:

The city goes soft; it awaits the imprint of an identity. For better or worse, it invites you toremake it, to consolidate it into a shape you can live in. You, too. Decide who you are, and thecity will again assume a fixed form around you. Decide what it is, and your own identity willbe revealed, like a position on a map fixed by triangulation (Raban, 1974: 9).

Fixed identities and subcultural boundaries can hence be considered illusory effects,representations that are used to repress the flows that construct social articulations in amalleable (or as Raban notes, ‘soft’) city. USFs, being rhizomatic, formulate the idea ofa molecular politics, a politics of becoming-other. In this sense, as has been shownthrough examples offered in this section, co-construction across boundaries becomes acreative force, as USFs grow more connected among themselves as well as with otherrhizomes. This potential for creative engagements can only be released through emergentcollaborative performances, revolutionary connections that ‘delineate a new Land’(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 472). In this ‘Land’, USFs and communities come togetherto experiment towards unexpected transformation. They change and become somethingelse or temporarily populate trans-spaces and trans-identities. This nomadic movementspirally renews the potential of USFs.

Yet, akin to Hardy’s paradox in quantum physics, by the time USFs are observed andtheorized, they have already been transformed into something new or have opened up thepossibilities for new practices to emerge (Pinder, 2008). Thus, we would like toemphasize that the examples we provide are all dimensions of a ‘grid’ that can bemomentarily observed and theorized. Additionally, we want to acknowledge the fact thatour illustrations also frame these events as concrete practices at times of an oppositional,developmental or evolutionary nature. Nevertheless, they are mentioned here asinstances of a process that does not cease to transform. Some of the USFs are (or may be)subjected to subsequent appropriation — yet at the same time, they are part of arhizomatic process of creating new linkages towards the emergence of new fields ofengagement, still unknown and unimaginable. Finally, like most ontologies, a rhizomaticapproach offers a perspective that may be considered instructive, yet in some cases notperfectly applied. The next section recognizes this and allows us to refine our analysis byindicating how the rhizome can be challenged when applied to USFs but, at the sametime, by supporting their rhizomatic potential to transcend an inside-outside system,offer ways to navigate these challenges.

Challenges and opportunities for rhizomatic USFs

By way of systematic analysis, we discuss four constraints of, or challenges to,rhizomatic USFs, basing our discussion on their level of embeddedness in politicalactivities. The first challenge involves the political motivation the USFs themselvesclaim. There are debates in the literature that posit the political motivation of particularUSFs against their more mundane or less political actions as urban interventions.A recent example of such a debate concerns the practice of urban exploration, notablythe practice of exploring disused nuclear bunkers. Bennett (2011) argued that urbanexploration has a taxonomic and survey-related orientation, as opposed to a transgressiveor emancipatory characteristic. This was countered by Garrett (2011b), who argued thaturban explorers conduct ‘tactical urban infiltration’, thereby suggesting that urbanexploration is a USF that is in direct opposition to the capitalist city.

We suggest that these views extract an aspect of the ‘outside’ (their anti-capitalist role,for example) and by turning it into an ‘inside-outside’ system, purposefully re-constructUSFs as subcultures. USFs as rhizomes with a fluid, open and unexpected membership,



however, exceed practice boundaries, co-constructing new territories of creativecollaborative engagement. Urban exploration may eventually acquire ‘roots’ (likeparkour) yet parts of it will remain ‘outside’ the ordering system and form multiplicitiesthat will inspire other urban (trans)formations. Therefore, the nature and role of theseimmanent multiplicities, which can (trans)form rhizomatic connections and re-constructurban exploration (or other USFs), ought to be the focus of future studies and debates inour field.

The second challenge relates to the hegemony of capitalist relations. Despite theemancipatory potential of rhizomatic USFs, market-oriented ideologies remain dominantin contemporary social contexts, profitability being a driving hegemonic force.Sometimes, USFs resist this dominant ideology by further tightening their subculturalboundaries, reinforcing the subculturalization process. For example, many parkourcommunities remain protective of their portrayal in the media and are wary of attemptsto create new forms or nodes of their USF, seeing it as a ‘dilution’ of the originalphilosophy. This apparently reverts USFs to oppositional, inward-looking urbansubcultures and leaves their rhizomatic potentialities for experimentation andtransformation unrealized. Yet by embedding and embodying rhizomatic potentialities(that is, anticipating and embracing the nodes ‘yet to come’) through unexpected urbaninteractions, USFs remain in flux, unpredictable and capable of inspiring creative formsof engagement and collaboration. Unpredictability and incompleteness constitute themas capable of creative urban practice: they do not converge to or diverge from something;rather, they (re)produce anew the urban environment and the power relationships thatit constitutes. Thus, USFs’ involvement with the unexpected and the unpredictableconstitutes a dialogical performance space that allows participants to challengepre-existing urban identities and the power relations that they entail, constructing newcreative potentialities.

The third challenge involves the attempt to commercialize and corporatize every newnode of the rhizome, strategies that may hinder decalcomanic encounters and potentiallyaffect the rhizomatic process. Admittedly, by looking critically at the concept of therhizome, one can identify that celebrating infinite differences does not guaranteeemancipation. Contemporary capitalism has moved beyond totalizing standardizationpractices and has also embraced distributed, digitalized forms of control; indeed, digitalcapitalism can be considered rhizomatic. Simply being different does not challengeestablished urban power structures. The carnivalesque contemporary forms ofconsumption celebrate plurality of lifestyles, with USFs potentially constituting newterritories to be colonized. If the rhizome is positioned against urban powers of controlthat attempt to root differential subjects to the rigid trees of a ‘fixed identity’ politics,might it also be giving rise to capitalist assemblages that can ‘break into’ the rhizomaticprocess? How can USFs defend themselves against capitalist strategies ofsubculturalization, which constantly aim to take over the new territory? Do they evenwish to do so? Inevitably, during the subculturalization process, new practices emergethat also have the potential to infiltrate newly formed capitalist assemblages. This isbecause as rhizomes, USFs predominantly revolve around not the object itself (theassemblage), but the entirety of the inter-relations that they potentially invoke, througha process of experimentation and expansion. Therefore, it is these processes ofinter-relating that (will) develop among members of the USFs (and between them and‘the other’), that is, these connections, ruptures and encounters that create alternativemodes of creative urban engagement and deserve further investigation and exploration infuture studies.

Finally, there are inequalities associated with access to information and participationto these USFs and their rhizomatic connections. Admittedly there is a gap between thosewho have and those who do not have exposure to the ideology and practice of USFs, andpotentially the opportunity to form heterogeneous and transformative linkages. Thisagain will be enacted differently across different cities. Cities of the global South, forexample, have less access to technological innovations in digital media distribution and



other resources and arguably fewer opportunities for building associations and linkagesacross borders and across practice territories (Sassen, 2006). Nevertheless, as discussedearlier, exposure to USFs during everyday encounters is a more common phenomenon inthe global South as a result of less formalized regimes of control and urban surveillance.Following this, owing to the heterogeneity embedded in the rhizomatic process, different‘territories of subjective formations’ and ‘spaces of engagement’ (Sassen, 2006) may beexpected to evolve in these contexts. Therefore, we encourage urban researchers toconduct comparative empirical research that can further investigate and document thisprocess and expand our analysis in respect of differential rhizomatic engagements indifferent urban environments.

In summary, for all the reasons above, we believe that despite these and otherconstraints that can be identified, USFs are important and potentially transformativeelements of the urban experience beyond their mere oppositional role. They enableconnectivity and collaboration, and offer new means of affecting a kind of liberationfrom dualist and hierarchical classical thought; an emancipation that does not rely solelyon subverting the existing urban condition, but also creates ‘nodes’ for the ‘trees’ that itinfiltrates. As Deleuze (1992: 4) advised, ‘there is no need to fear or hope, but only tolook for new weapons’. These new ‘nodes’ become ‘weapons’, albeit temporarily, andgive the formless other (the unknown) the ability to signify on its own accord. This offersto USFs a political existence and a role beyond the oppositional character of theirtemporary crystallizations. Indeed, if USFs are to have a political agenda, it is one thatpromotes the temporary, the unexpected and the unimagined.

ConclusionLangford (2006) wondered whether in the contemporary city the regime of ‘functionaltotalitarianism’ has reached a point beyond what De Certeau (1974) calls perambulatoryplay’s capacity to retrieve or redeem it, because play itself has taken on authoritariancharacteristics. While the notion of ‘play’ in the city being reined into ‘totalitarianspaces’ is a valid one, this article argued that there is a need to offer an alternative to thebinary logic and engage with a postmodern plurality of difference (Dear, 2000). Inparticular, the alternative discourses that have focused on resistance to these ideologiestend to be positioned with marginalized groups that are often treated as the onlyreactionary front against homogenized city life. We propose that these discourses onlyserve to further promote subcultural boundaries, which first marginalize alternativeactivities (othering) and then gradually, through the use of several institutional andtechnological means, appropriate them, re-introducing them as new, crystallized culturalmovements or trends (accruing).

We have explored how USFs are rhizomatic and cannot be restricted or contained inan encompassing frame or description. Fluidity, interconnectedness and multiplicity arecentral to their conceptualization. Hence, our reference to several USFs in this articlemerely provides us with a platform for exploring the rhizomatic process through whichurban communities expand their activities to new, unexplored forms of collaborativepractice. We took the analysis beyond USFs as subcultures or subversive anti-capitalistgroupings and re-defined them as dynamic explorations of cities’ multiple entryways andrhizomatic mappings. The greatest part of existing literature focuses on the temporarycrystallization of these practices. We, by contrast, stressed the need to examine thesecrystallized moments as part of a wider rhizomatic process, which through constanttransformation, re-defines our relationship with the city. Urban identities are performedas explorations of the unknown and unseen and, at the same time, are a product ofinhabiting a city of possibility, performative rediscovery and improvisation.

Thus, future research could build upon this conceptualization of fluid urbanengagements in order to explore the processes and strategies through which the



performative elements of the relational city inspire creativity and enhance possibilitythrough emergent urban territories and inhabitation of emergent identities. In essence,the stories of new formations have not yet been written, they float in the absence ofany formalized communities and can be ‘narrated’ in a creative exploratory state ofbecoming. This reframes USFs from marginalized activities into community-wideprocesses that engage a range of subcultures, activists, artists, participants and audiences.USFs, in other words, are open invitations to ‘the other’ in that the dialectic relationshipwith it (other voices, other uses of space or other paths) becomes a source of rediscoveryand interconnectedness.

In recognizing the complexity of these processes, we envisage going beyond urbansegregation towards atemporal and performative collaborations in the city. Thearticulation of rhizomatic social formations as part of a cohesive yet open urban realmreinforces the discovery of new urban territories that challenge authoritarian urbandiscourses as well as rigid subcultural boundaries. We proposed that it is through tracingthese subcultures back into the urban map that one may discover a new, trans-culturalurban milieu. This is the role that USFs can play in contemporary urban environments:to co-construct a reality yet to come, currently formless, distributed in the activities,imagination and improvisation of many ‘others’.

Political discourses and institutions that frame USFs as either members of the insideor the outside are responsible for temporarily crystallizing them into subcultures byreinforcing a dualist positioning. Admittedly, USFs may reflect particular socialpositions and roles in social settings (for example gender segregation in earlyskateboarding subcultures), raising questions with regard to their actual inclusiveness.Nevertheless, by questioning fixed identities, we view these positions (some of which weas authors have occupied before, during and after this research) as socially constructed,part of a rhizomatic process during which they can be differentially performed. Thisperformance, evidence of the process of dialogical becoming of USFs, transcendspractice boundaries, co-constructing new territories of creative collaborativeengagement. It is not about the static membership (inclusion or exclusion) either on theinside or the outside, but the performance of a position that dialogically transforms theurban actor and its role in the USF. This dialogical performance, we suggested, entailsDeleuze and Guattari’s (1987) ‘revolutionary connections’ and constitutes temporarytrans-spaces and trans-identities.

Subsequently, engagement during the performance of urban roles encourages theperformer to interrogate the political and ideological contexts and power relationsbetween self and other, and self as other. This process, which formulates an anti-dualistrepresentation of urban identities, relates to USFs’ potential for transformative action, adimension of their political role. In conclusion, we do not intend to replace one urbanframework with another. With this article, we celebrate USFs as rhizomes that empowerand inspire an open urban project to be re-made in practice. This, we hope, is a startingpoint for future empirical research that will examine USFs not as isolated urbanphenomena, but as fields of social engagement and transformation.

Maria Daskalaki ([email protected] ), Kingston Business School, KingstonUniversity, Kingston Hill, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey KT2 7LB, UK and Oli Mould([email protected]), Department of Geography, University of London, Royal Holloway,Egham Hill, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, UK.

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