Imagining and Making Material Encounters: Skateboarding, Emplacement, and Spatial Desire

Abstract

In this article, we draw from and develop existing ideas of spatial desire and emplacement to explore skateboarders’ skilful mobility and perceptive competence. By combining findings from Swedish and Danish ethnographic studies, we illustrate how skateboarders imagine and make new material encounters both in urban environments not originally built for skateboarding and in skateparks. These imaginations and makings include memories of previous material encounters and are a part of ongoing social negotiations, but they also have a component of imaginary novelty. Making and imagining are discussed as materialization and formation, which include the idea of active materials and sentient practitioners. Two types of material encounters were imagined and made: transitions and smooth lines. Subsequently, two characteristics of these types of encounters were described: “kind” and challenging. The processes of imagination and making took a mutual understanding for granted and deeply engaged the body in the ever-changing material environment. We argue that a conceptualization of spatial desire as emplaced and highly imaginable is fruitful for research on skateboarding and other movement cultures where engagements with materials come to the fore.