Running + The City (My heart goes out to Boston)

Inspired by events in Boston yesterday, I wanted to share excerpts from a paper I presented at the 2012 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium. I’ve written and re-written this several times. Thought about not sharing, but I need to. So here goes:

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Running is an improvised performance of place and of self, a discourse between running-place and running-subject…improvisation in space…experimental behaviour, shaped by the landscape and the environment. Running provides a dynamic vehicle to experience and learn about space, location and community.

The running act is the embodiment of something larger than the physical definition. Running is a state of mind and a way of operating. The running-subject, be they engaged in physical, mental or emotional activity, is positioned differently than the non-runner. Even while not actively engaged in the physical act, the running-subject experiences the world differently.

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Echoing de Certeau’s writing on the role of Wandersmänner (the walker), the runner authorizes possibilities of space by moving through it, privileging, inventing, transforming, and abandoning different spatial elements (1984: 105). The runner explores the space beyond the self, a place of encounters, interactions, trajectories and improvisations with physical space. Through these encounters, the runner creates and enunciates place.

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Running and walking are acts of becoming (Cresswell 2006: 47). The city is a denseness of realities from which the running-subject performs and creates their spatial story. “The streets arrange themselves around this person’s presence, giving up their complicated secrets as though every turning now was marked. A strange geography becomes smaller and tamer as part of a personal history” (Tonkiss 2005: 123).

 

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Cresswell, Tim. Place. A Short Introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Print.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steve Rendall. Berkley: U of California P, 1984. Print.

Tonkiss, Fran. Space, the City and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Print.