Bodies, Identities, Subcultures and Participation

Dr Paul SweetmanSenior Lecturer in Culture, Media &

Creative Industries, King’s College London

CONFERENCE ON PARTICIPATION OF YOUNG CITIZENS IN THE NEW ERA / YENİ ZAMANLARDA GENÇ YURTTAŞLARIN KATILIMI KONFERANSI

Istanbul Bilgi University NGO Training and Research Center/ İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi STK Eğitim ve Araştırma Birimi

9-11 May 2014

“It makes you feel individual ... You know,like, everyone's born with roughly the samebodies, but you've created yours in your ownimage, [in line with] what your imagination wants your body to look like. It's likesomeone's given you something, and thenyou've made it your own, so you're not likeeveryone else any more.”

But:

“You can’t, well, you can buy it, but you can’t like, go to the shop and try it on and say, ‘I’ll have one of them,’ and just walk out with it. You’ve gotta sit there for hours and put up with the pain. So even if you’re really rich, if you can’t stand the pain, you can’t get tattooed.”

“People can buy an expensive outfit or, you know, a leather jacket, but, [well] you can buy a tattoo, but you’ve still gotta put up with the pain and the process … There’s a lot more that goes into it.”

“because it's permanent and it's painful and it's all these things, and you feel special somehow, you know, it's quite strong, it's maybe more close, and more passionate than, than golf say.”

“Subcultural practice is not just about re-arranging commodities, it is also about the exuberant vitality of the here and now, and … the development of new forms of physical capital, bodies and subjectivities. It doesn't necessarily achieve anything beyond a fleeting enlivening of the present, and if it does, this is as much about the re-working of the body through ludic forms of self-discipline as it is about creative resolutions of a symbolic kind … The gratuitous expenditure of energy and effort to no formal end, other than the development and display of subcultural competencies and virtuosities, and the collective reproduction of the here and now.” (Sweetman 2013: 5.2)

“it may be that one way to avoid CCCS-style over-theoreticism without reducing subcultures to the status of youth culture in general or any-other-lifestyle would be to reformulate the concept in precisely these terms; as relatively committed lifestyle groupings characterised by the gratuitous expenditure of energy on non-instrumental pleasures and 'extra-curricular’ virtuosities, leading not only to the temporary appropriation of time and space, but the development of alternative knowledges, capitals, bodies and subjectivities which may themselves stand apart from, or challenge, institutionalised or hegemonic forms.” (Sweetman 2013: 5.3)

“The whole point of the skate space is that it is a naturally-evolved environment, a found space used in response to accidents of architecture. The community at the Undercroft has evolved around this type of use over four decades and the natural progression of the environment cannot be replicated. A purpose built skate area, regardless of a skater led design, is a fake and homogenised version of an urban environment and as such completely removes the entire ethos and artistic value of the urban arts practised in the Undercroft.” (http://www.llsb.com/about/faq/)

“No matter how the SBC package the new space, what is created there will be artificial and contrived. In its very essence; a skate park that is against the ethos of its perceived users. There are plenty of examples of where such contrived spaces have failed.” (http://www.llsb.com/about/faq/)