The art of tracing part VI: Espace Lisse(s)

"Near misses on the dogleap stairways
French kisses in the darkened doorways
L'espace du Lisses from back in the days" (Variation of Down to the Waterline by Dire Straits)

Oli Mould applies Deleuze and Guattari's theoretical idiom, smooth and striated space, to analyze the movements of traceurs. The traceur challenges the order of the city, like the nomad challenges sedentary space, whose striae is smoothed out by tracing.

Coincidentally, the concept smooth space translates to espace lisse in French; Lisses, a suburb to Paris, also being the cradle of parkour where the founders David Belle and Sebastién Foucan developed tracing.



"Returning to the simple opposition, the striated is that which intertwines fixed and variable elements, produces an order and succession of distinct forms, and organizes horizontal melodic lines and vertical harmonic planes. The smooth is the continuous variation, continuous development of form; it is the fusion of harmony and melody in favor of the production of properly rythmic values, the pure act of the drawing of a diagonal across the vertical and the horizontal" (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 477).