“Grey is all that is depressing and dull”: the chromatic landscapes of rooftop exploration in St Petersburg and the “grey spaces” of leisure in the Capitalocene

Abstract

‘Grey spaces’ have been adopted as a frame to understand the spatial and material impact of skateboarding in the Anthropocene (O’Connor, 2024; O’Connor etal. 2023), highlighting greyness as both a material and symbolic element in skateboarding praxis. This paper extends the ‘Grey spaces’ framework to explore urban exploration in St Petersburg, Russia, which has been shaped by material greyness including that of the country’s (post-)socialist history, and the symbolic greyness of the authoritarian present. As well as examining these local cultural and political influences, I adopt the Capitalocene epoch as a framework to investigate how these spaces function in the Russian context, offering a nuanced lens to understand alternative spatial practices under oppressive systems (of both neoliberal capitalism and authoritarian governance). This approach not only enriches the ‘Grey spaces’ paradigm but also proposes new directions for research on leisure practices, spatial exploration and grassroots appropriation in the Capitalocene.