castell

A particularly fine video (amazingly, it seems it was shot with only one camera) of the Catalan tradition of building castells:

There’s much to be said here about bodies, tall buildings, sovereignty, and community. Indeed, in some ways these castles are almost literal embodiments of the famous frontispiece to Hobbes’s Leviathan. A multitude constitutes the temporary illusion of sovereignty.

So what’s fascinating is the discipline and coordination invested in the construction of these human towers. But also their inevitable precariousness.