City 01 Skate Days, 2019. Skatepark Monte Tossal (Castillo San Fernando). Alicante. Spain. Leopard skater

Essentially, street skaters search for skating affordances from the existing environment, whereas park skaters utilize purposely built environments that match their requirements. Affordances are the elements embedded in the environment that support and furnish an individual’s behaviors. A street skater first identifies his or her needs, then selects from available spaces and discovers the niches for skateboarding. The places that street skaters utilize range from linear space, such as sidewalks and roadsides, to specific sites, such as plazas and parks. For nonskaters, the form of the city is usually defined by architects and urban planners who transform natural landscape and shape what we know about a city.

The so-called marginal spaces (spaces outside the marked and named places) are often more significant than the selected representations to skaters as they do not rely on zoning codes, architectural blueprints, or street maps to learn the urban form; they know the city by traveling through it. In fact, their use of the city often contradicts the projected functions.

Quote. Chihsin Chiu. «Contestation and Conformity: Street and Park Skateboarding in New York City Public Space», Space and Culture, february 2009.

City 00Skate days (CSKD) is a project of great scope on the world of skateboarding, raised from a vision that tries to go beyond its sporting side. I focus attention on aspects that reflect a subcultural model, very diverse moments and contexts, attitudes and signs that tell us about that experience: fashion, graffiti, gestures, local environments, lifestyles, group interaction, youth and contemporary identities. But it also opens up to other perspectives: the visibility and roles of women in the world of skateboarding, the relationship between skate and social integration based on community actions, the practice of skate in developing countries, the reinterpretation of urban culture from the expressiveness of very different local identities.

City 00Skate days (CSKD) es un proyecto fotográfico sobre el mundo del skate, planteado desde una visión que intenta ir más allá de su vertiente deportiva. Centro la atención en aspectos que reflejan un modelo subcultural, momentos y contextos muy diversos, actitudes y signos que nos hablan de esa vivencia: moda, graffiti, gestos, entornos locales, estilos de vida, interacción grupal, identidades juveniles. Pero también se abre a otras perspectivas: la visibilidad y roles de la mujer en el mundo del skate, la relación entre el skate y la integración social a partir de acciones comunitarias, la práctica del skate en países en vías de desarrollo, la reinterpretación de la cultura urbana desde la expresividad de muy diversas identidades locales.