http://www.itv.com/news/channel/update/2016-04-07/the-channel-archive-belle-vue-skatepark-1977/

In Jersey, when skateboarding first came about in the 70s, there was a big buzz in the community as this new sport was very popular with young people. It got so popular that a high quality skatepark was built, that was used by pro skaters. Although it was becoming very popular, many people in the community looked down on skateboarding and thought that it was a waste of time, as the kids who were focusing more on skateboarding than things some members of the community felt were more important. This led to the skatepark at Belle Vue pleasure park to be shutdown. This has had repercussions on skateboarding in Jersey, as ever since then there has been no more quality skateparks that have these kinds of facilities. Compared to today, things are the same in the sense that some members of the community still despise skateboarding. This is something I believe has to change as all that these young people want to do is practice and perfect their skills for their sport. With my documentary, I have focused on these topics in my film, as the message of the film is to inspire people to look for change in the community.

In Jersey, the skateboarding facilities are limited to only two parks and one mini-ramp. There is one in St Helier and one in St Johns, the one is St Helier is the main park which is usable for skateboards, scooters and BMX’s, and the one in St John’s is mainly for skateboards and occasionally scooters. Although to some people this might seem like a good number for an island of this size, in reality it’s not very much as the parks are quite a small size and don’t feature things that proper skateparks feature. For example, there are no bowls that you can skate, and this limits people learning transition tricks as the only vert equipment is the quarter pipe and mini-ramp in St Ouen’s, Because of there being limited facilities, a campaign has been set up on Facebook to gain funding for more facilities in Jersey. 

The project has been set up to be a way to gain funding from the public for skateboarding facilities, as it usually costs a large sum of money to build equipment. The first thing that is being funded is a portable 8ft mini ramp, so that they are able to have vert competitions all over the island and raise even more money for more projects. The project has gained a large following by the skateboarding community, as they all want to see a change in Jersey and have more facilities produced. It has even been picked up by the Facebook page of popular international skateboarding magazine Sidewalk.  This shows that the community is really wanting new facilities as the following for the project is growing larger and larger each day.

In my documentary I am going to be showing the project, and the whole theme of the documentary will be about wanting and needing the new facilities.

With my project, I have created a documentary that focuses on the skateboarding culture in Jersey, and how this urban culture is looked at by other members of society. Because of this, I have researched different documentaries that look on urban culture. One of these films is ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ which looks at the career of famous graffiti artist Banksy, and how his work made an large impact on society in the UK and worldwide. The film follows Thierry Guetta, a french immigrant living in Los Angeles and his passion with street art and urban culture. Throughout the film Guetta encounters street artists such as his cousin Invader, but mainly on Shepard Fairey and Banksy. We see how Guetta begins to hear stories about Banksy, who is this mysterious and secretive street artist and how his art is impacting the world. When Banksy visits LA, Guetta becomes his guide of the city and the two start to become friends. Continually through the film we see their friendship grow stronger and how Banksy mentors Guetta and lets him see every aspect of how he creates his art. To many people, Banksy’s art is considered a disturbance as it persistently features on public property and he exhibits his art in the view of the public. This always causes the art to gain a reaction as the art is politically driven and sends a message some people do not agree with. An example of this in the film, is when Banksy goes to Disneyland and places a doll dressed up as a Guantanamo Bay detainee inside one of the rides. This caused so much attention that the ride had to be stopped so that the doll could be removed, and Guetta, who was filming at the time was arrested by security guards and taken into interrogation. 

Exit Through The Gift Shop and Banksy’s work in general relates to my project, as they both are representations of a form of expression that the general society doesn’t agree with. Where many of Banky’s pieces have been removed and skateboarders told to leave certain areas as they are not welcome. The urban cultures that exist in our society usually are controversial or challenging to normal life, but they persist in bringing diversity within the way people express themselves.

Within the documentary I have created about the skateboarding culture in Jersey, I have featured music that I have created to use as background music. The music I have created suits the style of the film as they are hip-hop style instrumentals, and this urban genre of music goes hand in hand with skateboarding, as they are both subcultures of our community. Ever since skateboarding first came around, music is something that has played a big part in all aspects of the sports. From featuring in skateboarding edits to skateboarders being in music videos. In many cases, musicians are also skateboarders themselves. One example of this is the rapper Tyler, The Creator.

Tyler, The Creator is a rapper who grew up in California, USA, and has been skating and creating music from a young age. He has featured sound effects from skateboarding within his music, and regularly skates in the California and LA area. As a way of bridging the gap between music and skateboarders, Tyler’s music has been a way for different subcultures to connect as they all have things that they can relate to when listening to his music or watching him skate. As well as making music and skateboarding, he also designs his own clothing line that musicians and skateboarders alike wear. I feel the reason why he has been able to connect with all these different groups is that they feel he is a voice for the youth and is saying things that are considered quite controversial. As he has said in interviews, he doesn’t care if people become offended by the things he says as they are just words, and if someone was to use derogatory terms agains him he wouldn’t be offended. 

With the music I created, I took inspiration for the style of music that Tyler makes as it is something that really reflects the urban society in today’s world. I also wanted to create my own music as its something that came from Jersey, and my whole documentary is about Jersey and its effect on young people.

I created the music for the film using the program Logic Pro X. I started out by using a synthesizer and playing in a chord sequence. I then edited the synthesizer sound until I got something that I was happy with and suited the genre. The next thing I did was write in midi drums to create a beat to go with the chords. I then experimented with dropping the drums in and out for effect. I kept the instrumentals I created quite simple, as the type of hip hop I was going for is usually like this. 

Allan Kaprow, was a photographer who pioneered in establishing the concepts of performance art. In this performance art, he also developed the Environment and Happening in the 1950s and 1960S.  Kaprow coined the term ‘Happening’ in 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal’s farm in a way of describing the pieces that were going on. The pieces usually consist of artists performing their art in public spaces, where these performances may be considered out of the ordinary. The performances challenge the normality and regulations of society, by being an unconventional form of expression, which goes against what people believe to be normal. Happenings also regularly involve audience participation as the artists want their art to be something the audience can engage in, which breaks down the boundaries between the artwork and its viewer. The happenings first started out as scripted events, where the audience and performers followed cues to experience the art. Kaprow describes the happenings as “A game, an adventure, a number of activities engaged in by participants for the sake of playing.” The happenings represent what is now called New Media Art, which is participatory and interactive, with the goal of breaking the fourth wall, where the audience becomes part of the art. One of the works by Kaprow was titled “Eighteen Happenings in Six Parts”, which involved an audience moving together to experience elements such as a woman squeezing an orange and a band playing toy instruments. From this, Kaprow’s work evolved and became less scripted, and began to involve more everyday activities. Another happening, was where he brought a number of people into a room containing a large quantity of ice cubes, which the people had to touch, causing the ice cubes to melt.

Kaprow’s work has inspired many performance photographers such as Tom Pope to challenge the normality of society and what people believe to be the truth of what life should be like.  Kaprow’s work directly links with my project as skateboarding is a type of happening, where a group of young people meet up to go and skate. The way they skate the streets challenges what the community believe to be acceptable, so many people such as the police, usually tell the group of skateboarders to stop skating as its not the ‘right’ thing to be doing. Skateboarding and Kaprow’s work are very similar in these instances as they both are a subculture of society, that take their art into the public world, and actively connect with the environment and people around them

For my project, I am looking at portraying the youth culture in Jersey, and how in particular skateboarding is an area of society that many people look down upon and don’t see it as a good use of time. I am showing how the government don’t want to fund the sport but are willing to fund other sports heavily such as Football etc. For this I am going to create a documentary that shows how the youth culture in Jersey, especially the skateboarding community live, and speak with people that are a part of this. To research for my documentary, I am looking at a documentary produced by VICE called ‘Skate World:England’.

The documentary looks into the skate culture of England as they speak to numerous members and affiliates of the community. They first look at London and speak to skater Winstan Whitter, who talks about Southbank along the River Thames. He tells us how the park used to be a lot bigger and extended, but since then parts have been taken up with offices and other buildings, which means the park is now only a fraction of what it used to be. He also takes us to parks that have been specially funded by the governemnt and community, but even though they have been building a few parks, the culture is still looked down upon as something negative. We also meet Ben Nordberg, who is a skateboarder from Bath, who talks about how he started out skating the mini ramp, then went on top develop his flat ground skills. Nordberg and his friend Kris Vile tell us that they had to skate street as the skatepark that was built charged a lot of money to enter. This made them more dedicated to skateboarding as it gave them motivation to adapt to the environment around them, and improve their skills. Doing this meant they both gained sponsors, where they would receive free stuff such as skateboard decks, trucks, clothes etc.

From this documentary, the main influence on my project is that it focuses on the same topic. This means I have been able to look at the things that Vice have done in this documentary and take it into my own piece. For example, in the documentary they use a lot of archived footage of people skateboarding, as it adds more background to the story. I will be doing this as well by sourcing videos of Eddie from Youtube, and cutting up different sections to feature in the film. I also have taken the way in which they conduct their interviews, by getting the people to speak directly into the camera as it makes it a more direct conversation with the audience. I will be doing this as well, by interviewing Eddie as he looks and speaks directly into the camera.

Appropriation – The action of taking something for one’s own use, typically without the owner’s permission.

The idea of appropriation in art, is to use already existing objects and images, and recontextualising them to give them a completely new meaning. It has been a concept used by photographers and artists so that they can give something that has no meaning and give it a meaning by presenting it as art, or giving something that already has a meaning a new one. It allows us to question these pieces, and think to ourselves ‘what is art?’. Are we able to blatantly use someone else’s art, and not change it, but consider it our own?

An example of this is Sherrie Levine’s ‘After Walker Evans’. In 1979, Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evan’s famous picture of a sharecroppers wife and didn’t manipulate or change the image in anyway, and stated that it was her own piece. Talking to Arts Magazine in 1985 she said ”The pictures I make are really ghosts of ghosts,”. With this mindset, we have to try and think of the truth and fiction behind her work. Some people describe it as innovative, as she was able to take a photograph of a photograph and call it her own photo, because in essence it was. Other people such as the estate of Walker Evans, believed it to be copyright infringement, so bought the whole collection to prevent anyone else from doing so.

Developing on Levine’s work, in 2001, photographer Michael Mandiberg set up the websites aftersherrielevine.com and afterwalkerevans.com and made the photographs from each one of the projects available to download in a high resolution format, so that it is possible to print the images out at exhibition standard. This is to develop the argument on how information, art and a number of other things are becoming easier and easier for us to access within this digital age, and making us think about how easily art can now be created. With this idea of a developing digital world, in 2015 Mandiberg created the project ‘Print Wikipedia’, where he  printed out the 7,473 volumes of Wikipedia as it existed on April 7, 2015. Mandiberg says there are two reasons to why he created this project, the first of which was because he had his own personal interest on wanting to know how big it really was. The second reason behind this project was because Mandiberg usually works with found materials, and tries to see what the smallest move he can make that will transform them. So with ‘Print Wikipedia’, it was taking a text form in a database or website, and turning them into books, which Mandiberg felt that the transformation was enough that the meaning of the information became different.

For my project, I’d like to take inspiration from these appropriation artists by using material that is accessible online and incorporating it into the idea of my project. For the project I want to explore the online personas of politicians in Jersey, compared to what they are actually like in real life.

From Wikipedia: “Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.”

Visionary art has been prominent in different art movements throughout the centuries, with artists such as Salvador Dali and Max Ernst exploring the ideas of a fantasy reality. Twisting the thoughts and ideas of life, with their own interpretations of how they view the world. For example, Dali’s famous painting ‘The Persistence Of Memory’, depicts a scene with melting pocket watches in an outdoor landscape. The piece of work is a surrealist piece which Dawn Ades describes as “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”. It shows how Dali was able to grasp this idea of time, and turn it into a tangible work of art, exhibiting the way in which he understands and views the world from a surrealist perspective.

In today’s modern art world, artists have been able to develop on this surrealist ideals, by distorting reality and creating a fantasy world that explores the subconscious. One of the fore-running artists today is visionary artists Alex Grey. Grey has created his own unique style by taking his own ideas of reality, such as a simple family portrait and transforming it into a fantasy piece.

As well as looking into reality as a way to base his work off, he has also delved into the subconscious with pieces that portray an idea of fiction.  He has explored dreams, death and tried to picture the way he feels certain situations may look like.

In the above painting ‘Wonder’, Grey has looked at the subconscious and how you are able to put dreams, thoughts and fantasy onto a canvas. He has painted a image of a young child looking up to the moon, trying to paint what he thinks it might feel like for a child to dream of the universe and the world itself. He uses bright colours and intricate details, such as showing  the inside of the brain, as a way for the audience to really delve into the painting and think for themselves on the particular topics he covers.

With this in mind, moving forward I am going to be taking inspiration from these visionary artists, in a way that will help me connect these ideas of truth, fantasy and fiction and merge them into one idea that will showcase all three of the topics.

Truth – Definition: ‘the quality or state of being true.’                   – True: in accordance with fact or reality.

For many people, truth is something that can be defined as a fact. For example, we know that China having the biggest population is the truth as it can be classed as  a fact. But what constitutes something to be a fact? Can certain people perceive truth and fact as something completely different and interpret it to be fiction?

The BBC defines a fact as “something that can be checked and backed up with evidence.” This can be seen as the truth, but what if to some people the evidence provided isn’t sufficient enough to make them believe something is a fact?

Fantasy – Definition: ‘the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable.’

Most of us to think of fantasy as something that is impossible to happen in our lives, and features things that we’d never be able to see/experience. Although this is what I believe to be true, a lot of people have shown that they can make their fantasy a reality. For example, many musicians, athletes, actors etc. all dreamed of the fantasy of being able to pursue their dream career, and now they are living it. So in perspective they were able to turn something that was once and dream and fantasy and transform it into their reality.

Fiction – Definition: ‘invention or fabrication as opposed to fact.’

Fiction in essence is something that began as a way for people to express themselves from the very early days of basic story telling to today’s multi million holly-wood films. It’s something that was created for people to think of different ideas and make things up while also keeping people safe and not scared as it was something that is not true in reality. Such as trolls living underneath bridges in fairy tales,  they are not real, but sometimes fiction made people believe they were.

With this project I’d first like to research photographers and artists that look at these themes of truth, fantasy and fiction, and how they have their views on what they perceived to be the truth and fiction in reality, and how we can bring these fantasy ideas to life through photography and art.