When Dave the Chimp saw that a famous street artist had spent a year and a whole heap of cash to develop a device to attach a spray can to a skateboard he knew he had to claim back an important part of skateboarding – the Do It Yourself ethic. “I grew up with skateboarding in the 1980’s, when the only skateparks were a handful of crumbling 70’s relics, and California was an unreachable paradise. There was no internet, few videos, and street skating had barely been invented. Making your own places to skate, creating tricks, making your own (maga)zines, even your own clothes, was part of the lifestyle.”
Within 24 hours Dave had designed, built, tested, and posted to You Tube a video of his SKATE/PAINT device in action, with the bold statement “Skateboarding is still punk, and punk is about doing things for yourself.”
“I want kids to understand that they contain a huge creative energy, and hope that by using their creativity they avoid being sucked into the corporate, capitalistic world that skateboarding has largely become. Berlin is probably the last major city in the western world where this punk/DIY spirit lives, and it’s refreshing to see skaters here build their own parks with the trash they find in abandoned spaces.”
Dave is currently building a skateable sculpture with Radio Skateboards pro Lennie Burmeister at the Bethanien on Mariannenplatz Platz, as part of the Berlin International Skateboard Artists Residence. It will be opened to the public on August 5th.
Redaktion
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