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Critical Run Copenhagen

Why is critic missing ?

(from the academy to the Danish parliament)

28/02/2009

Through the XXth century, running has turned out to be the most physically based of the most symbolical act. USSR understood it perfectly with the person of Emile Zatopek, who became in the 1950s the human bomb able to explode at the Western world's face. To multiplicate world records is an efficient way of catching up one's attention and signifying to others who has the power. 

"He is becoming the first man of the universal history to be able to run more than twenty kilometers in one hour. (...) This prodigious performance will not be ranked before long, one rhapsodizes. Emile, thus, juts out from the human frame, recedes the norms of physical capacities, becomes for all unattainable, no one has ever gone so far." (Jean Echenoz, Courir)

There would be an interesting study to make about the indexicality of sport world records towards states' desire of appearing as a valuable and respectable force.

Fortunately, the system sometimes gets corrupted, as it happened in august 2008. Jamaica offered an impressive performance through relay and sprint races. 'Lightning Bolt' and his fellows suddenly re-introduced a part of dream in a media show, where athletes tend to be the means of an ideological competition between states. 

Faster faster faster faster (4x100m), or longer-faster (marathon), our present productivist system seems to be only interested into exceeding human capacities. To reach what ?

"He is running, he is running without wondering anything" (J. E., Courir)

The current sport paradigm appears to be an entertaining metaphor of the world of work, amplified by the need of medias for a powerful emotional image. Submerged by the exploit or the work, we do not have space left for thinking. The artists' run, sporadic and dispersed, is one possible time to open such a space. A time-space created for a collective critic of the future of selfless human activities.