Skateboarder and artist Raphaël Zarka at Maison Descartes, Amsterdam, Netherland

[Maison Descartes]

Saturday April 4th – 2pm

Conference in English : the role of skate parks and skateboarding in nowadays cities / architecture / design.
Free entrance.
RSVP : [email protected]

'Contrary to the greater majority of playgrounds and places reserved for the practice of sports, the different spaces created for skateboarding are never abstract. Most contemporary skate parks, with their mix of curves, inclines and plane-parallel volumes, synthesize the origins of skateboarding: the ocean and its birth place, the modern city. Accompanied by video footage, this conference will be a guided visit of skateboarding spaces and the mechanics they presuppose.' Raphaël Zarka.

The sport of skateboarding arose at the instigation of surfers when there was a lack of wind, as Raphaël Zarka relates in the book he wrote on the subject,'La conjonction interdite. Notes sur le skateboard' (2007). The artist,himself a fervent skateboarder, did research into the history of hisobsession and, in homage to the French philosopher Roger Callois and his'diagonal' way of seeing, made a connection between art and sport. For Zarka,skateboarding is not in the least an arbitrary sport. 'Le skateboard a façonné le regard de ceux qui le pratiquent.' The skateboard has formed him as well as his way of seeing.