Arts and entertainment

Traceurs

Traceurs – project summary and exhibition details

The final exhibition of an innovative arts project initiated by Westminster City Council has successfully taken place at Chelsea Futurespace from 4th June to 22nd September 2008.

The project began in 2007 when the council’s Arts Service commissioned the high profile artist Layla Curtis to create an art work that explored the area of Mayfair in some way. She developed a project that looked at alternative ways of moving through the city with a focus on the discipline of parkour. Parkour is an urban activity whose aim is to move from one place to another (for example across roofs, over railings) as efficiently and quickly as possible, using the abilities of the human body. Practitioners are called traceurs (hence the project’s name); they are highly skilled and move around mostly undetected.

Layla Curtis used heat-seeking cameras to record the routes traced by parkour practitioners as they moved through locations in Mayfair and elsewhere in Westminster and interacted with the buildings or obstacles in their path. She is one of the first people in the world to use this kind of technology for artistic purposes.

A documentary by Julie Angel about the development of the project was screened at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on Saturday 21st June 2008 at 2pm and on Thursday 26th June 2008 at 2pm.

Chelsea Futurespace Gallery
Hepworth Court,
Grosvenor Waterside Gatliff Road (off Ebury Bridge Road)
London, SW1 8QP 

The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
The Mall
London, SW1Y 5AH
Tel 020 7930 3647

The project is funded by S106 planning gain money following a building development in Mayfair, and was managed by Futurecity.  Parkour photos on this site are by Andy Day.

‘Traceur’ is pronounced (‘tra’ as in ‘travel’ and ‘ceur’ as in ‘certain’).

                                                                                                                                     > Next: Traceurs stage 1