To close the epic and impressive exhibition Disorder Disorder - Ulterior Motives in Contemporary Art, Izrock Pressings is presenting a screening and discussion on skateboarding films.

Prepare yourself for a whole rumble of important and groundbreaking skate videos followed by a good old fashioned panel discussion with some people in the know.

One of those people is going to be turning up with a broken arm from a recent skating mishap.  Wilfred Brandt is a writer and academic, but he also walks the walk.  Or maybe skates the skate?

Wilfred talks to us about the style of the skate scene and why so many skaters are also amazing artists.

You're doing a PhD in Skateboard aesthetics. What lead you to be doing this?

I worked as a writer for years, for magazines and websites and completed my Masters from Sydney College of the Arts in 2004. I worked at various university libraries for years after that and always contemplated doing my PhD. But y’know, choosing a PhD topic is like picking a tattoo design – you have to pick something you won’t get sick of living with every day for (at least) three years!

While writing for Monster Children I interviewed some of the Beautiful Losers artists and wrote about their art. I loved their work and felt like I had a good understanding of their approach partly because I grew up skating (steadily from 1986 to 2000, and onwards intermittently). My final presentation for my Masters involved a lot of self-reflection and made me realize how much skateboarding shaped me. I feel like there’s something I and a lot of other skaters “get” about Harmony Korine or Spike Jonze that people who didn’t grow up skating won’t “get” in the same way… we share something indefinable.

The years of library work had taught me a bit about academic research (and made it seem less daunting/intimidating), so the PhD has been a perfect opportunity to combine all these interests and skills – I am super lucky and stoked that COFA and my supervisors saw potential in an unconventional project and have been nothing but supportive!

What makes a great skate film?

Ultimately it should make you feel good and stoked on skating and make you wanna skate. People’s favorites vary wildly for a number of reasons. There’s a weird sensation I can’t explain without using a tacky ‘porn’ analogy; a good video makes you ‘horny’ to go skate, and your favorite video (or section) is the one that never fails to get you ‘in the mood’ to skate. Bleh.

Personally? I love “Video Days” by Blind Skateboards. It’s held up the best for me, because the way it’s filmed, put together & the skating in it make doing a 180 ollie to fakie 50-50 down a handrail look equally as fun as just cruising down the street and ollieing up 6 inch curbs. It has super impressive, incredibly skilled skating, a diversity of landscapes and music, it’s not too long, and there’s some funny, stupid shit thrown in there. (watch a short clip of Mark Gonzales from "Video Days" below)

How has skate style progressed over the decades? What are some of the enduring characteristics?

Basically from the 50s ‘till 2000, skate style progressed alongside technological advancements (in board manufacturing, skate media technology, and ramp / park building or skate-able terrain). There’s also a constant impulse to rebel against the previous generation’s trends (though this seems to be dying down somewhat - it feels almost like we are in the endgame of skate style, where no radically new maneuvers will emerge - we are just reworking old moves in new combinations).

I think one enduring characteristic has been an inate drive towards extremes, and – for a culture so fundamentally opposed to standardized competition – there’s a constant lionizing of whomever can do the highest air (80s vert), the biggest ollie (early 90s street), the techest trick (mid-90s street), or grind the longest rail (early 2000s street).

When we think about skate style, how far beyond "the board" does this extend?

That’s kinda what my thesis is all about! I definitely think there’s a distinct worldview and attitude that is engendered and communicated through specialist skate media (videos, magazines) and iconography. If you’re heavily involved in skating, certain things are definitely “cool” and other things are “not cool”.

Traditionally, being humble and self-effacing was always important. Having a reverence and respect for your skate idols and elders is super important too. Skaters collectively are fundamentally opposed to “selling out” and they have a distinctly different attitude towards celebrity, which I think is super fucking important nowadays. As a counterpoint to the way mainstream constantly accentuates the divide between the common man and the celebrity star, skating has traditionally sought to keep that distance minimal or obsolete. The skate industry is a fantasy machine for sure, but it operates in a totally different way.

These are just a few “style” factors out of dozens (and mostly positive ones), but they all inform how people walk, talk, and live their lives after skating.

What would you consider the Golden Age of skating?  

I like 1990 a lot. You see all these different styles & directions emerging, you see old styles hanging on and grasping at validity - and it’s all caught on tape!

I don’t think of this as a Golden Age as in the best skating ever; I see it more as the most creative era for trick and graphics, everything was full of potential and still kind of innocent. So many young skater-run companies (H-Street, World Industries, New Deal, Real, Foundation) debuted; a lot of em would throw ideas out just to see what would catch on, y’know?

I saw this great doco on sex in films and they were talking about early John Waters films, saying, “The stuff these guys wanted to say and questions these guys hadn’t quite worked out, you could see them working out the grammar of the question in the context of the film which was part of the fun – part of the excitement”. That’s TOTALY how 1990 feels, if you look at the graphics, ads, and skating of that era.

Who do you think is the epitome of skate style ... "then" and now?

I think in terms of highly-visible proponents who shaped and steered the culture? Jay Adams, 70s Dogtown punk style; Christian Hosoi, 80s vert rock star style; 90s I might go with Mike Carroll or I also like Gino Iannucci. Lance Mountain had a great quote where he said how skaters aren’t just popular because they’re good; they’re popular because other skaters want to be them. Those skaters each seem to define their respective eras as the skaters that sooooooo many others wanted to be!

Do you think that skate style has a particularly masculine edge?

Uggh. Unfortunately yes. That is actually the only thing which has bummed me out in my research. There’s this weird, stubbornly immature insistence on maintaining a façade of brute “real”-ism. Certain interview subjects and personalities you can just tell you will never get past their dumb, tough guy persona to anything truthful.

There has never been any intelligent dialogue within skateboarding about masculinity, misogyny and fear of emasculation or homophobia, and I doubt there ever will be. It’s kinda funny in its ridiculousness, but ultimately really sad.

Why do you think so many skaters are also great artists?

My argument in my thesis – which I’ve since heard echoed by so many other skaters and artists that it’s now almost a cliché – is that innovation and creativity are probably the two most highly-regarded traits within skating. Inventing a new trick or coming up with a new way to skate an obstacle (or re-envisioning an object previously deemed unskate-able as skate-able) is so important and that creative mindset bleeds over into whatever you do after skating.

Who are your favourite skate artists?

The older I get, the more I appreciate Neil Blender’s work. His rough hewn imagery is so warm & inviting – very intimate – and his sense of humor is so spot on for skater humor. I always love seeing new works by Gonz & Harmony Korine. Even though the former often produces work that seems weird-for-weird’s sake and the latter often revels in unrepentant, brutal nihilism, both are consistently inventive & never predictable (Harmony truly floored me with two of my favorite ever works of vernacular, abject beauty, his book A Crack Up At The Race Riots & his recent short film, Act Da Fool).

The more Marcus Oakley I see, the more I like him – what an amazing world he’s creating! I’m also really enchanted by the way Conor O’Brien’s recent photos relate to one another, he’s building this really distinct vision that I totally dig!

What are your top five boards ever!?

01 Alien Worksop (artist Neil Blender) notebook series

02 Jason Lee Blind American icons, 1990 (artist Marc McKee)

03 Lance Mountain caveman graphic Powell 1986 (artist VC Johnson)

04 Chocolate street series (artist Evan Hecox) (or car series, guitar series, soda series… basically any icon series Evan creates is incredible!)

05 Alien Workshop chiarascuro series (artist Don Pendleton)


Hi-8 High Five

A Screening and Discussion on the Influence and Progression of Skateboarding Films

SUNDAY 14th NOVEMBER 2010 - 3-5PM

Penrith Regional Gallery & The Lewers Bequest
86 River Road Emu Plains NSW 2750

RSVP - 02 4735 1100

Speakers:

Paul Brabanec

Paul Brabanec lives between New York, London and Sydney and founded These Video Days in 2010 to document and archive the best in current and classic skateboard videos globally.

Wilfred Brandt

Wilfred Brandt is a U.S. born, Sydney-based arts and culture writer and academic. He is completing his PhD thesis at The College of Fine Arts on Skateboard Aesthetics.

Su Young Choi

Su Young Choi is director of Volcom's Skateboarding Film department USA. and an integral figure in taking Australian skateboard films to the world.

Cameron Nicholls

Is the Sydney scene's premier skateboarding film maker; dedicated to documentation, Nicholls' films are a time capsule of skateboarding's raw local talent and the culture surrounding it.

Izrock Pressings Joseph Allen Shea will moderate the panel.