Presentasjon ved parkour fotograf Andy Day (UK)

Presentation: “Exploring the communist monuments of Former Yugoslavia through parkour”

For three years, I have been collaborating with parkour athletes from Former Yugoslavia to explore the region’s communist era monuments. These strange, otherworldly structures are often found deep in the Balkan countryside and are characterised by complexity and contradiction – lost, forgotten, celebrated, destroyed, loved, abandoned, decorated, vandalised, and more.

This ongoing project examines collective memory, culture deployed as governance, and the potential of a new generation to establish an authentic sense of self while living in a contested present that is still emerging from a complex past. This sense of self is created through the assertion of a new, if temporary, understanding of place and landscape that is shaped by history, but not trapped by it.

About Andy Day

Andy Day is an internationally published photographer specialising in adventure, travel, sports, architectural and landscape photography. He has been photographing parkour and physical interaction with the city since 2003. With an MA in Photography from Goldsmiths, he also speaks, teaches and writes about visual culture and the sociology of urban space.

Through participant-observation, Andy’s work examines the body’s relationship with the built environment, wilful misuse of architecture, subversive practices, appropriation of space and place, edgework and social interaction. He is particularly interested in parkour’s potential as a tool for the democratisation of the city and its architecture