Parkour reflected in a Mirror's Edge

Parkour, or l'art du déplacement is a physical excersice or artform in which you use your body to move in what often is urban landscapes, trying to tackle different parts of the scenery in imaginative ways. Another form is called free running.

Photograph by Alexandre Ferreira, used here with permission under Creative Commons.

I am by no means performing the movements of Parkour, but I have come to learn that it really is a interesting concept and philosophy. I think I first saw free running moves in movies like James Bond: Casino Royale and Madonna's video for her song Jump. And it would have probably stopped there unless I would have bought swedish produced game Mirror's Edge a couple of days ago.

Mirrors Edge is a a clever game, which is visually stunning as well as caught my interest in finding out more about the philosophy of free running and parkour. What it is and why the freedom to challange obstacles and using your body and interact with your surrounding.

Faith from Mirror's Edge, looking out on a stunning scenery.

Of course Mirrors Edge is mostly just a spectacular game, which I think has many positive aspects as well as a sheer beauty that many other games lack: parkour is something more then that though. As far as popular culture goes, movies tends to mostly focus on having a villain or hero doing free running to highten the exitement. But it is important to know that there is more to it then this.

Members of the Seattle Parkour Asssociation practice at Seattle's Gasworks Park. Photo by Paul Swortz, used with permission under Creative Commons.

Parkour is a philosophy based on a positive relationship with the body, using it to train your body and mind to overcome obstacles. Not only climbing physical fences so to say, but moving past and beyond mental walls as well. There has been arguments about the history of parkour, but it it i safe to say that it has a strong french connection with men like Georges Hébert, who was the first to write about parkour as a 'natural method' of moving oblivious to your surrounding.

According to Andy from Parkour North America parkour it is:

"a means of reclaiming what it means to be a human being. It teaches us to move using the natural methods that we should have learned from infancy. It teaches us to touch the world and interact with it, instead of being sheltered by it.

Also worth noting is that people in parkour hold the idea that it should be non-competetive and against rivalry. In this sense, it is similar to geo-caching: which I practise and is also not focused on winning against others.

It is important to build a positive relationship with one's body. And while parkour might definetly not be for everybody, it is one practise amongst many which ponts towards imaginative ways of rethinking how to use your body. And because of this, I believe it has the potential to allow for people who practise it to grow.

A New Chapter of Living

I have begun what I hope will be a new chapter in my life. A new chapter marked by several slow changes that I have been trying to implement in my life, but I want to mention one of these changes in this blog today.

I just took the step of getting myself involved in the local chapter of the Green Party here in Sweden. I have made a point of not talking much about politics in this blog, as I intended it to be more oriented towards culture. But things tend to become broader then what first was thought out to be the world of Suecae. This blog was after all intended to only be about my own music from the beginning. An idea that soon had to be complemented in favour of my increasing interest in photography. And then in the end I started to write about my own experiences of life.

Yta, captured 2009

I mention becoming involved in the Green party because because it is a personal decision of significance. I also hope that it will provide me with an arena to use my personal experiences of healthcare and social security to influence society in the direction of being more sensible towards people with different needs and abilities in society. To recognice and cherish the difference of human experience and stop seeing people who are not able to work full time as a burden.

I do not intend to change this blog into propaganda for my views and opinions, there are enough good and terrible blogs about politics as it is. I write about this because I feel that I want to share this with those of you who have supported me, quietly or vocally. Especially some of the remarkable women out there in the blogosphere, who impress me with their solidarity and life loving attitude almost every time I stumble across their blogs.Thank you all for coloring the invisible web of the Internet into something real and tangible. I hope to be able to continue to paint the web myself, but if I before used a lot of black and white I hope to add more sparkling colors as I go along.

Entering Vindelkroken

Mining for minerals and ore in a natural reserve. Taste the words and reflect upon that notion for a short while. This is what mining company Blackstone Ventures wants and has acquired prospecting rights to, in the northernmost parts of Sweden. They will soon start to drill for minerals near the Sapmi summer village Vindelkroken.

If you wish: watch this short video created by independent documentary creator Stéphane Lombard.

The legalities are complicated and I have read about the company using juricial loopholes to be able to prospect the area, but no matter the legal sides and turnabouts, I really hope that they will not be able to continue this project.

Syterskalet - Used here under a Creative Commons license, originally from Wikipedia.

I am not alone in this notion. Communities of people with Sapmi background and culture, being an indigenous culture which inhabits the northern part of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia, are largely against mining in their traditional area of living.

Parts of the Sampi's historical way of making a living for themselves has been trough herding reindeer's. There are claims being made that mining would disrupt the animals natural habitat and also change what has this far been left untouched.

I am writing this because I think it's shady at best to start industrial projects in natural reserves, there is something I believe that many people would recognize as wrong on a very fundamental level.

I also believe that values which includes a support of biological diversity and the preservation of the beauty of the natural habitat needs to be strengthened, so that there is a balance between industrialization and biological sustainability.

On the Cover

The DJ gone artist producer Polaski just released a new free EP on excellent net-label Kahvi Collective, a great source for independent electronic music . I am the man resonsible behind the photography for the cover, which I am very happy to see together with the very soothing and relaxing music of Bendii Syndrome which is currently playing in my headphones.

You can download the release here.

That is not all though. I have just finished designed my first record cover for ambient artist Motionfield which is due release on Itunes and other spaces within two months. Seing as I am very much fond of his Laponia LP, it was quite an honour that he contacted me to ask me if I wanted to do the cover for his yet to be released album.