Climbing: With Routesetters

This research project formed the fourth chapter of my doctoral thesis where I conduct a first-person study of the embodied practice of routesetting to further my understanding of encountering bodies as sites of transferability and design practice. Can the setters’ skills in creating problems for bodies help the field of embodied experience design solve its problem with bodies? Working with Mile End Climbing Wall, I observe, document and participate in the activity of routesetting with their team of professional routesetters and investigate this unique practice which has much to offer embodied design.

The research activities comprise first-hand observations, interviews, documentation, participatory sessions and reflections of climbing and routesetting between September 2022 and March 2024. I outline them here as four distinct phases.

In Routesetting Taster I give a first-hand account of a one-day taster course where I learn to set boulders for the first time at CanaryWall in Limehouse, London.

Observing Professional Routesetting, combines observation and interviews with the professional routesetting team of Mile End Wall, including Head of Routesetting, Alex Lemel and his teammate, Giacomo “Jack” Busato who share their unique insights into their embodied practice.

In Listening to Climbers, I experiment with how the emotional and pedagogic encounters experienced by setters and climbers from their unique subjectivities can be documented and re-presented independently. Can the temporarily displaced bodies of climber and routesetter be brought together? Can the intentional and unintentional transferences that take place between routesetters’ and climbers’ bodies be made transparent? I document sounds of climbing, on my own and with groups of participants, and record interviews with routesetters where I inquire about their intentions while they are setting, with the aim of presenting them in a participatory sound installation.

Finally, Routesetting Clinics is a first-person account of my participation in a four-day training run by international routesetting trainer Ryan Henderson. I use this as an opportunity to apply what I have learnt from observing and interviewing routesetters and listening to the spaces where these emotional encounters intersect with other climbers into designing my own routes.

This approach allows me to respond, or perhaps encounter, my research questions from three unique positionalities: as an observer of professional routesetters as embodied practitioners, as a listener of bodies climbing, and finally, as a practicing routesetter.

View my thesis page, for more context of this project. Or,  download my thesis, Bodies (in)Form: Reconceptualising Embodied Design as Intercorporeal Encounters, on the Goldsmiths GRO website to read about project outcomes.