Publication details
Restoring Balance : Highlining as Collaborative Outdoor Artivism
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In Canada, outdoor spaces are racialized and gendered landscapes and the “outdoorsy” culture remains restricted for minoritized people. This paper will introduce highlining (slacklining in the heights) as a new form of collaborative outdoor counternarrative that challenges the dominant notions about the outdoors and nature. Slacklining is a modern form of tightrope walking with roots in climbing. Slackline is a flat 2,5 cm wide webbing that is dynamic and light. Highlines are rigged in both natural and urban landscapes and can function as artivist pieces that redefine landscapes and contest settler colonialism, patriarchy, and white and human supremacy. As a community non-competitive but ultimately “extreme” outdoor activity, highlining fosters meaningful transcultural alliances and creates strong bonds between people of diverse backgrounds, effectively facilitating safe access to the so-called “great white outdoors”. Presenting selected outdoor highline projects from Canada creatively captured on photography and video, the paper will analyse how highlines function as collaborative artworks co-created by the photographers and highliners. It will argue that highline artworks underscore the connection between humans and nature when the highliner becomes part of the landscape and part of their artwork. Highliners walk spaces that have never been walked before but they are not conquering them but rather look at the world from an alterNative perspective as the sport requires complete surrender, humbleness, and connection with the surroundings. Highlining thus has a transformative effect on both the highliners and highline-afficionados as highline artworks highlight both human vulnerability in nature and our place in it. |
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