psmith frontside at the "dept of skateboarding" bowl in PDX, during Platform Animation Festival. Around the time competition screenings were being shown.
The doc "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is a key film to understand why skateboarding is important. Skating has had a major impact on the contemporary world. Overstated? I think I can hear laughter. Culture and skating have been fused since the Z Boys(a group of skaters in the 70's) chose not to follow conventions of a typical sport. They added a rebellious punk aspect that just wasn't there. To them it was a lifestyle, like art or surfing, or rock and roll. Rollerskating didn't have a group like the Z Boys, and look where that ended up.
Every time I go to an animation festival i think about this, i mean, what a bunch of dorks! (gen. speaking of course), talking about pitching, and sponge bob. Why don't animators talk about Sargent, Stravinsky, Keaton or Kubrick, or the stones? This is why I dig animators like Hisko Hulsing and Danny Antonucci, these guys are real artists. Fully engaged in a culture while working incredibly hard to impact art history. These guys, like the Z boys, know whats up, they're just naturally just cool.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Why Skate Culture is Important...
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5 comments:
asshole.
Solid rant, Patches. Not too much a fan of skate culture myself (weak ankles), but I want to second what you've said about the narrow focus of so much animation conversation. It reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut said: "When they were inducted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1973, Kurt Vonnegut said of Allen Ginsberg: "I like 'Howl' a lot. Who wouldn't? It just doesn't have much to do with me or what happened to my friends. For one thing, I believe that the best minds of my generation were probably musicians and physicists and mathematicians and biologists and archaeologists and chess masters and so on, and Ginsberg's closest friends, if I'm not mistaken, were undergraduates in the English department of Columbia University. No offense intended, but it would never occur to me to look for the best minds in any generation in an undergraduate English department anywhere. I would certainly try the physics department or the music department first -- and after that biochemistry. Everybody knows that the dumbest people in any American university are in the education department, and English after that." (ganked from the nation.com) I want to meet some geneticists, cellists and surgeons. The animation community, and I think the proliferation of these little blogs is a contributing factor, is becoming an ouroboros. In short, the next person who asks me an After Effects question at a party is getting headbutted. Grrr.
arthur you're the best.
skaters are hot.
What about Razor™ scooters?
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