After premiering the 2016 Poetic Collective video White, Black, Colour at Moderna Museet in Malmö, the museum reached out to us to do yet another collaboration. We drifted the idea of making a skateboarding video inside of their main exhibition hall, and they said that they could make it happen. There was only one catch – since the hall was only empty right between tearing down one exhibition and building the next, we would only have a single day to shoot.

We got to come see the space the day before the shoot, to try and plan some of the shots before hand. At this point the old exhibition was still being demounted.

Based on the visit and photos I took, I made some quick storyboard sketches for the next day. I knew I wanted to give the impression of the skateboarders moving in an infinite space, and even though the hall is big, since skateboarders move so fast, they would quickly hit the walls.

Knowing these limitations, I developed a few strategies on how we could achieve this “infinity” effect.

• Show as little as possible of the back walls
• Jump-cut between different takes going in the same direction, to make the space seem bigger
• Never show the ceiling

In post production, I also made sure to remove any vents, cameras or outlets on the walls and floor to give the space an even more surreal feeling.

The last component was the music, which I composed to further emphasize the feeling of endless space. The track is a combination of different layers of my voice, together with percussion. For the droning bass sound, I ended up recording the water tap at the place I was renting at the moment. If you opened it just slightly, it made an excruciating noise.

Pitched down however, it worked really well to give the track a touch of eeriness, contrasting the soft harmonies of the main vocals.

Rather than simply using skate videos to document the performance of tricks, Poetic’s videos often explore an overarching concept or theme. Their video, ‘Movements’, shot in the museum of modern art in Malmö, is a particularly conceptual video which displaces skateboarding from its traditional urban setting and instead situates it within the immediate context of art.

Cardiff Skateboard Club