Raphaël Zarka FORBID- DEN CON- JUNCTION

THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION THE Raphaël Zarka FORBID- DEN CON- JUNCTION 1 followed by 5 THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION 29 THE QUESTION IS WHICH IS TO BE MASTER © Éditions B42 & Raphaël Zarka 2011. Graphic design: deValence Translated from the French by Chris Sharp Proofreading : Louise Stein ISBN 978-2-490077-40-3 Dépôt légal, juin 2020. B42—140 E09 Éditions B42 80, rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis 75010 Paris – France [email protected] www.editions-b42.com The author would like to thank : Cécilia Bécanovic, Mathieu Abonnenc, Maxime Thieffine, Guillaume Constantin, Alexandre Dimos, Élie During, Alexis Papadopoulos, Julien Prévieux, Claude Queyrel and Didier Semin for their support and their advices. The author also wish to thank: Bertrand Trichet, Carhartt, Bischoff/Weiss gallery, Chris Sharp, and Sam Griffin without whom this english edition of that book would not have been possible. THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION PROLOGUE Skateboarding is a tenacious obsession for the those who began doing it early on in their teenage years. Forms created by skateboarding can be seen more and more in galleries, museums and some of the most significant manifestations of contemporary art. This fact, which some might see as a simple phenomenon of fash- ion, is nothing less than the outcome of a logical evolution: the young skaters who just twenty years ago infested public spaces and built mini-ramps in their backyards, are now of the age to exhibit in Documenta. Skateboarding structures the world view of those who practice it. Despite itself, it engenders a reevaluation of spaces and materials otherwise taken for granted. Who, aside from an artist like Ed Rusha, would be interested in an empty parking lot? I didn’t immediately realize why I found certain works of art, such as Imi Knoebel’s hermetic piles of boards, so striking at first glance. This paradoxical familiarity was largely the result of the value that skateboarding had trained me to accord to a nice piece of plywood, and which I inevitably brought to a pile of plywood leaning against a wall. In the street, the stockades erected for the construction of a façade or a shop window are always a source of 5 THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION happiness as they remind me of the smooth surface of a new skatepark. On the other hand, I have zero sympathy for old pieces of plywood which are soft, disfigured by humidity, and full of splinters. The text that follows is in a sense an introduction to skateboarding. Certain artists may perceive skateboarding from the vantage of minimalism, while others from that of performance, and others still from the popular arts and crafts-- the important thing being that it resonates in one way or another with one. For my part, I have adopted the “Roger Caillois” point of view. But what is the relationship between Roger Caillois and skateboarding? To answer this question based on a single work, “Man, Play and Games” (1958, trans 1961), would certainly not suffice. It is, after all, not the most up-to-date text and there is something even a little out- moded about its tables, cases and categories. When I decided to use Roger Caillois as a point of departure for a so-called study of skateboarding, I pictured more the entire literary trajectory of the man rather than any single work. I am thinking of the Caillois of “The Writing of Stones” and “The Mask of the Medusa,” of he who can transform the basic scientific principles underlying his research into literature. The Caillois who discovered and translated Borges. My goal was simple: to write about skateboarding, and by doing so, appropriate for myself an activity which had occupied me in a quasi-obsessive way during my teenage years. I wanted to create a sense of order while attempting to communicate to others, especially those completely unfamiliar with this activity, the logic behind such an obsession. Thus, while waiting for other texts featuring more elaborate forms of reflection, biographical details and factual descriptions, I here timidly propose this small offering: I would like to “weave” these few notes into a reading of Roger Callois’ work. A small homage to a writer who promotes a way of doing, what he called a “diagonal science.” This then is an essay to read as if it were a tale in waiting, or an introduction to an initiation. 6 THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION INCURSION There are innumerable and various types of games: board games, games of physical skill, of chance, open air, of patience, of construction, etc. Despite this almost infinite diversity and with a remarkable consistency, the word ‘game’ conjures up the same idea of leisure, risk and skill. Above all, it infallibly bears with it an atmosphere of abandon and entertainment. It is a source of relaxation and enjoyment. It evokes an activity devoid of constraint, and which is no less devoid of consequences on everyday reality. It is opposed to the seriousness of everyday life and is, as such, qualified as frivolous. Elsewhere, it is opposed itself to work as if it were a kind of lost or wasted time contrary to time well spent. Indeed, the game or play produces nothing: neither goods nor works. It is essentially sterile. At the beginning of each new game, and even if they played their whole lives, the players always return to zero, and in the same conditions as the first game. 1 Roger Caillois Roger Caillois classifies play or the game among four primary categories: competition (agôn), chance (alea), simulation (mimi- cry) and vertigo (ilinix). According to him, modes of playing can be situated between two antagonistic poles: the motive power (paid) and the all-powerful rule (ludus). After these primary categories, he couples them. Of the six possible conjunctions, two are fundamental, two are contingent, and the remaining two are antonymic or forbidden. That one of the two “forbidden conjunctions” best characterizes skateboarding (and more generally, any sport involving “sliding” 2 , e.g., surfing, skiing, snowboarding, etc.) 1 Roger Caillois, Les jeux et les hommes: La Glisse, published in 1982, whose subject le masque et le vertige. Gallimard, Paris. matter dealt with a certain number of sports 1958, pg. 9. Citation translated from the such as skiing, surfing, windsurfing, sailing, untranslated introduction by Chris Sharp. the flying wing, gliding, rafting, kayaking, 2 “Sliding” refers to “sport de glisse” canoeing, sledding, skateboarding, roller- which is a specifically French expression skating, ice-skating, etc. “Sport de glisse” invented at the end of the ’80s, and could basically refers to “extreme sports,” which be literally translated as “sliding sports.” is how it shall hereafter be known throughout The expression was originally conceived the rest of this text (translator and author’s by a surfer, Yves Bessas, author of the book, note). 7 THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION seems to indicate that games and the way they are played, just like art making practices incidentally, have expanded and become considerably more complex over the course of the last fifty years. THE GAME AS ACTIVITY The game is defined by Roger Caillois as an activity that is at once free, separate, uncertain, and unproductive: strictly governed by rules or make believe (the two last terms being almost exclusive of one another). Before anything, however, it is a form of recrea- tion; whoever plays is free to play or not to play. A compulsory game is not enjoyed as a game, in the sense that to live, or survive, is not to play. The game is a separate activity, which is to say, “cir- cumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance.” (pg 9). 3 Whether the players measure their results against others or themselves, the outcome of the game is always uncertain, as to play is to surrender oneself to chance. The game is unproductive and in this way differs from any professional activity. The remunerated player (athlete, actor or other) no longer plays, he or she works; that nevertheless does not change the nature of the game. Governed by rules, the game is submitted to “conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts.” (pg 10) In indul- ging in make believe, the game may accompany the awareness of a reality parallel to everyday reality, even of a total unreality. Although there are numerous spaces created expressly for the activity of skateboarding (skateparks), it is above all an urban activity. More precisely, it is a practice “of the urban,” in the sense that its terrain is really the city, or at least a montage of the diversity of the city’s materials and forms. Contrary to this, hip-hop dancing (an example among many other forms of urban recre- ation) merely breaks down the walls between the space reserved for training and its representation. It limits itself to a tiny parcel of the overall urban space. Of public space, its adepts seek out the smoothest possible surfaces (marble, granite), with or without 3 All page numbers in parentheses refer to Roger Caillois’ Man, Play and Games. Translated by Meyer Brash. 1961. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2001 8 THE FORBIDDEN CONJUNCTION foot traffic, covered and heated depending on the season. Yet while the skater may ignore numerous aspects of the city, he rarely limits himself to a single surface. He uses a variety of urban accoutrements (benches, garbage cans, fire hydrants, etc) as much as architecture (flat or inclined surfaces, stairs, curbs, etc). He inhabits and uses the city differently than a pedestrian or even a flâneur would.

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