Introduction: Archiving the Urban Backstage

Abstract

This chapter offers a brief history of skate video before making a case for its value as an archive of the city from below. ‘Below’ has a dual meaning here. One, below as an unofficial or ‘rebel’ archive, a subaltern history of urban space. Two, below as the angle from which skateboarders and filmers gaze upon the city, capture it on video, and the angle from which it is viewed. I discuss the surprising underappreciation of skate video and skateboarding more generally in scholarship on cities; odd given the boon in attention to infrastructure, urban landscapes and their cultural imaginaries, debates about urban theory in the Global South and Global North, low-end globalisation, urban performance, and urban media among other themes. In response to this unappreciation, I consider the alignment of skate video with existing scholarship that experiments with the city as an archive. I argue that skate video is a record of ethnographic practice and an object of ethnographic inquiry, making it a durable media object to analyse an otherwise fleeting act of urban spectacle. The chapter closes with a breakdown of the book’s chapters and a short section on approaching the text.