In 2015 I finished a Phd THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTING THE ‘BOULDERING’ EXPERIENCE AS IT EXCEEDS CONVENTIONAL FORMS OF REPRESENTATION in which I hope I argued relatively successfully that bouldering was in fact an art form. 

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Since that time things have inevitably changed. Currently there are people practising bouldering as an art form consciously and often less consciously that is still a fact. Yet a much higher percentage of boulderers are now participating in a sport and maintaining the growing fashion of calling themselves athletes.

What is the situation right now? It depends on how and from what point you look of course. However if we ask this question and our research is a scan of current trends and media coverage, on the internet and social media platforms then the answer is that it is definitely a sport. In actuality you would be hard pressed to find much evidence suggesting otherwise.

The problem that is emerging here as I see it is that the sport that is being practised is largely derived from the art. This is a one sided relationship and I think it is fair to claim that the sport doesn’t add much to the art. What does art give the sport then? Namely creativity, opening new boulder problems outside being the primary example. Secondly indoors the contribution is both problem setting on walls and in the problem solving from the climbers. It is the creativity that ties these acts together, it is the creativity that nurtures the sport. If however there is no support or recognition of the role of creativity in this practice/activity/sport, then what will happen?

Route or bloc setters, I would hazard a guess have all climbed outside and have bouldered at places like Fontainebleau, Magic Wood,Rocklands, Bishop to name a few top class venues.. The knowledge they gained from this experience they then bring inside into the climbing walls and gyms and into the creation of the problems/blocs. What will happen when these bloc setters retire, give up. Problems will then be set by a younger generation who have climbed extensively or predominantly inside. Their knowledge of movement, their creative understanding of what a bloc can be and how their body fits with that bloc will be derived from an increasingly narrow field. Ultimately this will undo the sport, making it increasingly anodyne and boring, well at least for those people that understand bouldering as art, or even the people who have a flickering remembrance of an experience that constituted more than a blob to blob hop skip and jump.

It is this kind of  imbalance in the media of representations of bouldering that I have tried to address in my Phd and through the occasional foray into the world of digital platforms and publishing.

This week I uploaded my thesis to https://independent.academia.edu/AndyWhall?from_navbar=true 

Initially I had thought I could publish it, then I moved to France, started a family and lost interest in all things academic. Tentatively I began re thinking this position and thought after the OLympics and the steepening curve of athletic terminology creeping into the climbing world. Plus what I began to see as an existential crisis developing in the climbing world. I thought it was time to stick it on the web. This blog post is also a small step in that direction too. 

So once again you too can read it all here   https://independent.academia.edu/AndyWhall?from_navbar=true

*Blocs, a modern term, denoting a boulder problem, confusingly though it also is used to refer to boulders. It is therefore possible to have a bloc on a bloc. Personally I think its’ a stupid term.