Page 11 - SMCK Magazine - Issue #01

“A CARICATURE OF THE ART WORLD”
Skateboarding is widely consi- dered a “loud” sport practi- ced by young individualists. Invented by surfers in California in the 1960s, it first became popular through slalom competitions. The discovery of empty swimming pools and rough urban terrain for the sport turned skateboarding into a real movement. Since 2020, it has been an Olympic discipline.
Apart from the extreme commercia- lization skateboarding witnessed, it also became a synonym for punk rock, hip hop, and street- and life- style culture, and in this way has pe-
netrated the art field more and more.
Despite the rise of the skateboar- ding industries, many skateboard manufacturers still see added value for themselves in the “personaliza- tion” and the manufacture of small series instead of mass production.
In Dogtown and X-Games, Velten Schäfer analyzes the history and de- velopment of a movement that is “sport” and “art” at the same time. Christoph Ziegler—a skater himself in his youth—talks with Velten Schä- fer about the transition from skate- boarding to art.
CZ: What makes skateboarding dif- ferent from other sports move- ments?
VS: Skaters always claim an artistic subjectivity for themselves, based on the assumption that the act of skateboarding is a means of expres- sion and comes from the soul, etc. Indeed, a skate performance is something completely different from ski slalom or javelin: the mo- vements follow aesthetic parame- ters and not the logic of stopwatch or meter.
In his classic book From Ritual to Record, Allen Guttmann shows how
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SKATEBOARDING
Subway, Berlin. Photo: Cola Kuhn
VELTEN ECKEHART SCHÄFER ABOUT A MOVEMENT BETWEEN ART AND OLYMPIC DISCIPLINE
Interview by Christoph Ziegler