When someone mentions a skate video, the first thing that comes to mind is a compilation of skaters doing crazy tricks, falling down and getting back up to try again. It’s what most of skate videos are after all because it’s usually amateurs who are filming them for the sake of the tricks. These days it seems that more and more visual artists have found a big source of inspiration in the skating scene and they’re looking to create fresh stories out the rides and tricks.
Such is the case of the Berlin-based visual artist and the creative director at FLVR series, a skateboarding brand and art collective based in Berlin, Youri Fernandez. Together with FLVR and Nowness, he created a mesmerizing monochromatic skate video titled Skater’s Paradise: ON/OFF.
The film is a part of the HOW MANY BPM? project – an experimental performance and installation series where skateboarders become human metronomes as they ride back and forth on a ramp. The project was founded in 2014 at the l’Hermitage gallery in Paris by Youri Fernandez and visual artist Iouri Camicas.
ON/OFF’s soundtrack is a metronomic track from the electronic musician Petit Fantôme which sets the tone and the pace for the four skaters portraited, including Fernandez, as they ride throughout Berlin. The video keeps switching from day to night depicting the skate scene in the city. Nowness called it “a monochromatic portrait of four boarders as they make Berlin their playground”.
The attention to details in the video is amazing. The skaters are even wearing black during the day and white during the night. It can’t be easy filming the exact same shots at the exact same place during the day and during the night and then combining them without any glitches, but they did it.
Watching it you don’t have a feeling you’re looking at two different sets of videos filmed during different times of the day, it really feels like someone is flipping the switch throughout the video.
Have a look!
Skater’s Paradise: On/Off - NOWNESS
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