Inside Parkuir: the art project queering sport, space and our bodies

On a cool February evening in Alicante, I find myself looking up at a strange sight. On an inconspicuous street on the edge of the Mercado neighbourhood is a building that’s both number 29 and number 27. The address of the building could be either of the two, because it is both, and therefore, also decidedly neither. The brass digits of the ​‘27’ sits in a wooden circle at the very top of the door itself, between two panes of glass reflecting palm tree fronds blowing gently in the breeze. The 29, printed in white in an entirely different font on a rectangular blue metal plaque, rests just above the doorframe. 

Maria Laudes and Guiu Gimeno point out this innocuous inconsistency on their guided tour of the city, which follows a trail of architectural oddities, queer landmarks and examples of community efforts to improve public spaces. The context for the tour is to celebrate the launch of the two Valencian artists’ booklet outlining their ongoing project ​‘Parkuir’, which Gimeno describes in its simplest form as, ​“a way to explore how we can use architectural elements in our day-to-day surroundings from a perspective that breaks with functional logic through the medium of our bodies.” We are encouraged to embrace these instances of subversion as symbols of queerness in the literal meaning of the word – an oddity that breaks with convention – as signs that queerness, in its reclaimed form, is all around us. 

Parkuir is both a literal – though subversive – sport, and an approach to the relationship between our bodies and the physical spaces in which they exist when we don’t adhere to the ​‘norm’. It seeks to explore the influence of neoliberal capitalism in the design of public spaces, and what it could look like to disobey, reconfigure and reject these logics. The term comes from the idea of queering (“kuir” in Spanish) parkour and fracturing the numerous binaries that sports, architecture and the built environment uphold: healthy/​unhealthy, well/​unwell, fat/​thin, man/​woman, able-bodied/disabled. 

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“I find the idea of sport as a signifier of ​‘health’ quite funny because so many sportspeople are constantly injured,” Laudes points out, referring to the way in which these binaries, that often seem simple, can so easily be picked apart. Parkuir doesn’t just address this in the abstract: ​“We play with the idea of rest,” Laudes adds, referring to activities that involve lying down, ​“and have come to realise that a lot of people find it hard both to get to sleep and also to get up.” The very act of engaging in Parkuir can spark a realisation that binaries are, for the most part, baseless constructs. 

Parkuir, unlike parkour, doesn’t involve jumping between buildings and vaulting across walls. That’s not to say it couldn’t – Parkuir isn’t prescriptive – but the focus is on subverting the underlying principles of a sport like parkour that emphasises strength, movement and flexibility. A Parkuir activity might be lying down across a set of stairs. Architecturally, stairs help you move from A‑B, they propel you forward. Parkuir asks, what if we used that same space to practise stillness? 

The booklet is accompanied by a set of cards with different suggestions for how to practice Parkuir. They include things like falling: ​“Let yourself fall. It doesn’t matter where or how, what matters is that you fall.” We’re encouraged to think of falling as a gesture, as choreography, like voguing for example. ​“Fall slowly, in an exaggerated way, with style, with others, on top of others,” the card reads. Another suggests walking while imagining that gravity doesn’t exist, to play with the concept of floating, while yet another tells us to attempt to fall asleep in a public place. The idea with all these actions is to actively reimagine, and in particular undermine, the designated function of the architecture that surrounds us.

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Laudes works primarily in visual arts, and Gimeno’s background is rooted more in performance art, but Parkuir stems from the duo’s shared experiences. ​“This project looks at the way a fat person and a trans person’s identities can have a lot in common, especially in the context of sport,” Gimeno says. In the booklet they write about how Laudes was thrown out of hip hop classes for not having enough ​‘flow’. Why, they ask, does sport exclude so many people? As an activity we start at a young age that teaches competition before play, to endure over listening to our bodies, it creates hierarchies of value that often stay with us for the rest of our lives. How do we resist that and reclaim sports for ourselves, especially for those of us already marginalised? 

Some of that is evident in the roots of the project. The pair were drawn to parkour because it costs nothing, making it accessible – at least financially – and for its implicit subversion of architecture, turning buildings, rooftops and ledges into playgrounds and arenas. However, ​“it’s charged with connotations of gender and ability,” they write. Parkuir is their attempt to further subvert the activity. Rather than prioritise strength, advancement and competition – all elements of capitalism as much as the sporting world – Parkuir is instead, ​“a sport based on the logics of enjoyment, lack of productivity, of messing around, of failure, collectivity and how we can do that together,” says Gimeno. 

The pair do, however, struggle with defining Parkuir as either a sport or an artistic project. They’re not the only ones. A venue in Alicante turned down a request to hold a Parkuir event because they’re a sporting venue only. Yes, the pair insisted, that’s what Parkuir is! It’s a sport! The venue didn’t quite see it, and perhaps, in some ways, neither did Laudes and Gimeno. Yet this only seems to enhance the project’s aims. Just as queer, disabled, racialised and plus-sized bodies don’t adhere to binary norms within and outside of sports, Parkuir exists in the margins and the middle ground. It is both a sport and an art form, while simultaneously being both and neither. Much like our house at number 27/29. 

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At the first ever World Parkuir Day, which took place in Valencia in the spring, the event begins with a mock Olympic inauguration, complete with a choreographed anthem performance, an official welcome speech, and the lighting of the ​‘Olympic’ flame (made of paper). Participants then have an hour to create their drag persona – a crucial part of these premier games – a chance to play with the idea of the Olympic hero, with a nod to the constant barrage of anti-trans rhetoric around hormones and doping. Contestants had made suggestions for other activities which are selected at random: ​“move a finger”, ​“applaud with genitals”, and ​“lift up a building” are some memorable ones. There is also a wig fight and a race in invisible heels. 

Then, the festivities conclude with a bingo-inspired prize ceremony. As much as there is an underlying political intervention implicit in Parkuir, the element of fun is just as important, as these events highlight. Laudes and Gimeno have come to see how the parameters of play implicit in Parkuir gives some participants permission to experiment in ways they might not otherwise. 

Gimeno’s hope is that this can have a ripple effect. ​“If you allow yourself to do something [that feels silly] because you know you’re within the boundaries of the game, I think this might allow you to do the same in your day-to-day life. Imagine we’re on a staircase and instead of climbing the stairs we slide down them as if on a toboggan. The next time you come across a set of stairs, you’re going to have a different emotional experience [with this memory in mind],” they explain. 

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Our city tour concludes with an even stranger sight than the double-numbered door. A metal handrail lines the edge of a very small plaza and the end post has disintegrated at the bottom, forming a sharp point on one side that means it doesn’t quite reach the ground. The minute surface area of this point rests on a large piece of stone as if a person on tip toe, is somehow holding up the entire thing, seemingly without any issue. It defies all sense of physics, of architecture and solidity, and yet there it is in plain sight. Who had put the stone there? Why? Does this indicate a dedication to renewal and revival or is this an homage to the disintegration of public spaces and lack of public funding? 

More abstractly, if an entire handrail that could support the weight of hundreds, if not thousands, of passers by who leaned upon it to ascend the slanted plaza, defied all laws of science (at least from my very non-scientific perspective), what does that say about the logics on which we base our understanding of the world around us, of the built environment and what we’re told is conventional, normal, expected? How does questioning the status quo inform how we inhabit and navigate space, and vice versa? And can we really analyse a pointed railing post balancing on a stone to such a degree? Parkuir says that we can, and that we must, and that doing so is a process of liberation for ourselves and each other. 

Molly Lipson is a freelance journalist. Follow her on Instagram.

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