This event was the fourth in Sheffield Hallam University’s Space & Place Group’s 2023 series: ‘Exploring’. For this final session we examined the action and meanings of mountain biking, having examined ruins in session 1, subterranean exploration in session 2, climbing and quarry lurking in session 3.
The group’s future events can be booked here: https://shu-spg.eventcube.io/
Our presenters for ‘On your bike’ were:
Jim Cherrington (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
Introduction: Mountain Biking, Culture and Society
Via an innovative reading of mountain biking, this introductory presentation will outline the importance of the collection. Following some important definitions, the chapter introduces the reader to the notions of dominant, residual, and emergent structures of feeling, suggesting that these three modalities allow scholars and practitioners to move beyond static and essentialist readings of subculture. Subsequently, it suggests that the tensions and conflicts relating to mountain bike culture serve to highlight some of the most important issues of our catastrophic times, and that important lessons can be learned from studying these disagreements. Finally, the presentation briefly sketch the book’s themes, with new insights offered on the significance of mountain bike culture in relation to identity, bodies, ecology and the cultural politics of lifestyle sports.
Jacob Bustad (Towson University, USA) and Oliver Rick (Regis College, USA)
Riding with Red Bull: Downhill MTB, digital Media, and DIY urbanism
This presentation examines the intersection of digital media and urban sport and leisure practices through a focus on point-of-view (POV) videos of downhill MTB racing, specifically the Cerro Abajo races in Valparaiso, Chile. In our analysis, we discuss how these videos function as part of the wider marketing and advertising efforts of GoPro and Red Bull (Kunz et al., 2016) and reflect transformations within the relationships between corporations, athletes, and fans in the contemporary sport industry, especially in regard to ‘niche’ sport cultures such as downhill MTB. We argue that these videos demonstrate a particular type of ‘GoPro gaze’ (Vannini & Stewart, 2017) that incorporates not only the representations of active bodies and the sights and sounds of branded global sport competitions, but also depends on the unique urban environments of the race route and emphasises the ways in which this form of branded content includes representations of do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism (Finn, 2014).
Clare Nattress (Leeds Beckett University/York St John University, UK)
Air pollution as ‘slow violence’ during multi-day mountain bike trips
Bikepacking consists of multi-day, self-sufficient, journeys by bike, that usually take place off-road, and is a phenomenon which has increased in popularity in the last 10 years. This presentation represents one of the first attempts to unpack contemporary multi-day mountain bike experiences, whilst identifying key themes in past and present scholarship. The presentation uncovers how mountain biking can be a performative art methodology to investigate, reveal, and disseminate the problem of air pollution. Multi-day mountain bike trips are cycled to collect data using a technological sensor, as well as employing artistic and embodied methods such as the concept of attunement. In doing so, the artist elucidates the ability to convey embodied experiences of dirty air through sensorial, affective, and more-than-cognitive registers. This research therefore calls attention to human and non-human bodies not only as victims of slow violence but also, conversely, as crucial sites of knowledge production
Jeff Warren and John Reid-Hresko (Quest University, Canada)
Escaping to Find Yourself: Portrayals of Authenticity in Mountain Biking Multimedia
How do the historical trajectories of ideas of authenticity, and the sociopolitical conditions that frame them, inform contemporary mountain biking multimedia, and what can this media tell us about mountain bikers and the broader contemporary mountain biking sportscape? In this presentation, we investigate these questions by examining two exemplars of mountain biking multimedia. We argue that these films do not simply reflect mountain biking experiences but are co-constitutive of experiences in ways that both solidify and perpetuate particular constellations of authenticity and also reproduce socioculturally-situated forms of inequality. In other words, mountain biking films do not just give us something to watch but give us ways to experience mountain biking. Throughout our analysis, we call for mountain bikers to critically rethink problematic ideals of authenticity and strive to understand one’s place within political and societal constructs and consider the ethical implications of our actions.