City 01 Skate Days, 2016. Muelle de San Gabriel. Alicante. Spain. Rampa

Public perception has posited skateboarders, street performers (breakdancers, graffiti artists), and other subcultural populations (homeless, youth) as possessing no economic worth and as inadequate consumers of public space. However, the postmodern ethos of skateboarding in the 21stcentury has led to the emergence of the subcultural identity as an increasingly important output of capitalistic production processes through the production of marketable street imagery and cultural creativity.

Now that skateboarding has global reach, this has presented new sets of planning problems for local governments and city planners. While city governments celebrate the benefits of recreational risk-taking, they continue to exert control and prioritize commercial interests. For example, there is legislation enacted in various countries worldwide to keep skateboarders out of city centers and to fine skateboarding in public places, while many skateboarders who are provided publicly-controlled skate-parks still transgress boundaries to retain subcultural identity [while remaining] deeply skeptical of skateboarding being represented as a sport.

Quote. Christopher D. Giamarino. «Spatial ethno-geographies of sub-cultures in urban space: skateboarders, appropriative performance, and spatial exclusion in Los Angeles», 2017

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.