Trading awareness in exchange for naivety - an old school video experiment.

I have been travelling night time to Zagreb to start a video experiment which will be posted by the end of this year with Mirko Plod Svrabic and Filip Tomić.

Last year we were having a good meal just talking about the past times as often happens and we came up with a simple romantic idea. We meet up, we go back in time 10-15 years, we film a parkour related old school video.

This started as a joke and we wanted to keep it so. But the more we got closer to the moment in which we had to film the more my curiosity about it has been growing.

In fact, as we progressed through the years, experiences, researches, knowledge and thinking strip away some naivety to our practices. Of course on the other hand we gained awareness. This is the price to pay to progress. And that moments it is a fundamental part of the development of a practitioner.

Just to give a quick example dancers, in order to fully understand where and when to move they learn how to count beats and recognize the rules behind music.

 So, with time, they develop a matrix to orient themselves through the notes heard by the ears. Once this happens it cannot be removed.

So, the questions here are: Can we get rid of years of knowledge and regress to some degrees in order to gather back naivety, recall specific emotions, reasons for practicing and old approaches? Is there a meaning to do so in a practice we have already developed? Is it possible at all?

It might just be pure onanism – but I found some value in this.

My answer will come later on, when the video will be posted. So far, I just say one thing. Old school is all appearance. It doesn’t exist. Time goldens memories but what makes them shine is the power of the moments lived. We need less nostalgia, less I want to do that tomorrow, more full-on in the present.

One single clip raw unedited clip from that day.

Now I am already in Belgrade for another project again with my friend Saša Sevo to push the horizon of the events further, enjoying a coffee by the river and this view on the 14^th floor.

Marcello.

A sustainable practice

Hey folks,

Recently I uploaded a video called “it’s not about the practice, it’s all about the practice”. If you missed it, you can find it here.

Here I am posting some of the reflections behind it and my current choices in my personal physical practice. There we go with a brief talk and some reflections about what sustainability means for me:

Transcript from the video:

What is sustainability? Well, it’s the capacity of a system to remain productive over a long period of time.

This is a huge theme that can apply to many different fields. It can be tied to economy, biology, psychology and so on. Of course the one I am interested in it’s in the form of taking forward a physical practice.

I can feel in most of the community I have looked into: parkour, martial arts, strength training, handbalancing and so on that this is somehow of an hidden topic. And even if we had long long long talks about this, nobody applies the outcomes of these conversations.
 It is as if conscious choices are overridden by ritualistic practices.

So a reason to do something over something else it is just because it’s right, it has always been done in this way, this is the way to do it. I believe we should challenge this approach.

It would be a little bit like, in my familiy they have always been eating 5 aliments, it’s an absolute taboo to try something new. This would lead you to many different illnesses but you wouldn’t care because you want to stick to your traditions.

Choosing a practice that is not diverse it would be the same. Hitting the crack on the wood over and over again until it breaks down – of course it will one day.

Overuse injuries will come, motivation to train will fade.

So when you see me going through all my researches and travels that is what is happening, I am sustaining and pushing forward my practice.

I have recently heard people call me the one of the flow on the bars or the one of the handstands or so on.. – you miss the point.

I am setting goals and getting there to make sure I am always fully committed in what I am doing, appreciating the practice itself over the content, I am choosing variety and diversity over monothemes.

I experiment in random and in the exploration of the new, I want to be able to throw myself in practices I don’t fully understand in order to come up with a deeper knowledge at the other side of the river. This is keeping my motivation alive and running all the time.

One thing I always remind to people is, do you get the call anymore? The call to get out, to try things new, to play, to experiment. That visceral need to do. If you don’t, look for it and travel. If you don’t get it anymore, well I believe that is the beginning of the end.

Questions and observations welcome,

Marcello.