Planking: An Art Form In Its Own Right

Liana Piedra

Life & Style

By Claire Pershan

Published 8 months ago

Have you ever had the urge to lie face down across a staircase? A rooftop? Perhaps across the aisle of a grocery store? Suppress these desires no longer because now is the time to join the growing trend of planking. Plankers across the world are expressing themselves through this new and innovative art form.

Planking involves holding your arms in closely to your sides, pointing your fingers and toes, and keeping your body as flat and stiff as possible. The more unsuitable the location you choose to lie across, the more impressive your plank. A daring subset of plankers prefer to hold themselves suspended, only contacting a surface with their hands and feet.

Comedian Tom Green claims to have originated the practice in the mid '90s, although Christian Langdon and Gary Clarkson, creators of the planking website thelyingdowngame.net, also assert that they were the first. Also known as "The Lying Down Game," "Extreme Lying Down," and "Facedowns," planking is making its way across the globe. Noteworthy planks include a police car plank in Australia and Hugh Hefner's plank on a table (critics of this unremarkable location should take into account his age).  

Planking.me, one of the premiere planking websites, organizes photographs of planks by state and country and classifies them into a range of categories including "dangerous" and "illegal." On the darker side of planking, two men from Melbourne, Australia were fined for planking on the tines of a forklift and on the shed of a roof at their workplace in the first-ever planking prosecution. This past spring, plankers everywhere mourned the death of 20-year-old Acton Beale who, according to police reports, fell while planking from a seventh-floor balcony in Brisbane, Australia.

No one can deny the deep significance planking holds in society today—especially in Australia—but the real question is how this practice is affecting the 5Cs. Are there plankers here among us? If so, what can we learn from them? I surveyed several students to find the answers to these essential questions.

"The beauty of planking is that it puts you in touch with a greater community," Ben Kersten PO '15 said. "Planking just used to be something I'd do on my own, whenever I felt inspired, but when I found out that I wasn't alone, that really took my planking to a whole new level." Kersten, an aspiring art history major, sees a clear relationship between his studies and his planking experiences. "What is art, except a human modification of something else?" he reasons. "When I'm hiking in the woods and I climb up to plank on a rock overlooking a beautiful view, I guess I'm just trying to tell the universe 'Hey, I'm here!'" Ben's dream plank would be a simple but meaningful one–to plank on a pedestal at the Pompidou museum in Paris. (In France his plank would be called “à plat ventre.”)

Like any revolutionary art form, planking has its critics. Jordan Greene PO '15 of Greenwich, Connecticut, dismisses planking as "what Americans do to avoid exercising." When asked to describe planking in one word, the majority of those questioned picked "stupid." But plankers in the Claremont community should not be discouraged by such assessments. Here at the 5Cs, we are all in our planking primes—in both the physical and spiritual sense. A liberal arts education is about creativity and self-expression; about challenging ourselves and forging a stronger community. 

I am happy to report that Kersten is far from alone in his endeavors. Three plankers were spotted bridging the gap across two railings along the ramp leading up to Big Bridges. Though they were admittedly on their way to Pub, their planks were no less aesthetic or meaningful than Kersten's—three young men, setting out for the evening's adventure, faces downward, backs to the stars.