Early skateboards had steel wheels, wheels of steel, with the axle rigidly fixed to cheap-assed decks. The invention of the pivoting truck and cushier, grippier tires and more dynamic decks made what we know as skating. The excellently edited documentary, Dogtown and the Z-Boys, shows the crossover in style between surfing and skating, in the 1970's, coming from Santa Monica and Venice, on the new trucks and boards.
That then leads directly to now.
Skating's a skill mastered by outsider kids, with a ton of free time, and no bodily fear. They are physical artists. They infected a couple of generations of skate culture and innovation. And now skating is a legit sport. One so infected was artist Chris Johanson. Johanson is an artist literally lifted off his board into the art world of New York's Whitney Biennial. His loose psychological urban folk art may be a result of a shy skater's observational modus.
Johanson has not forgotten his roots and has organized a skate film festival with art/skate photographer bud Pat O'Dell, Super Skate Summer 2011. It's got films, talks and bands. It's got bands scoring films. It should be fun. Super Skate Summer 2011 is at Hollywood Theater 7:30PM each night, $7 a night
Feminism. Somehow we got entranced by the French philosophers and their post-Modernism, and ever since, everything is post-, post-post-, or post-post-post-. So I have no idea what post- of feminism any reader is on. But there is a pretty good argument that contemporary art as we know it would not be what it is without the feminist artists of the 1960's.
Filmmaker-artist Lynn Hershman-Leeson was part of that era and filmed artists of the time in her apartment and at work. She has edited it all into a sprawling documentary !Women, Art, Revolution, !W.A.R. The film features Yvonne Rainer, Judy Chicago, Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Nancy Spero, Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Schapiro, Martha Rosler, Eleanor Antin, Janine Antoni, Miranda July, The Guerilla Girls, and more. The score is by Carrie Brownstein. Wow.
The film premiered at Sundance. It just entered theatrical release June 1, showing in NY. But in an insane piece of fortune, it shows at PSU's Fifth Avenue Cinema at a bargain price. Film at the PSU Fifth Avenue Cinema. www.5thavenuecinema.org 510 SW Hall Friday and Saturday 7PM, 9:30; Sunday 3PM. Free for PSU students & faculty w/ID. $2 for all other students & seniors. $3 General Admission. Free popcorn for all!
