Social Media and Trending Reporter for the nzherald. Viewers from around the world have been left stunned by New Zealand skater Levi Hawken and his downhill skateboarding antics after a hair-raising ride down one of the country's more beautiful yet dangerous stretch of roads. But with international tourists no longer in the country, it means the roads near Milford Sound are nearly deserted. H e stopped talking about it in interviews. But this year, he decided to tell the story on his own terms.
The short documentary Meme Me, which premieres in the Loading Docs festival, is directed by Hawken's old friend Stjohn Milgrew, who has been photographing Hawken and his friends "since we were teenagers in Aotea Square".
The film's visual style is distinct from the clatter and action of most skate videos — high drone shots emphasise the beauty of hill-skating and the magic and threat of gravity. It's inescapably about Hawken's experience of bequeathing a phrase to the national lexicon and becoming public property in the process. But it's just as much his attempt to put it to rest. At the age of 43, Hawken still skates, lately on the team of the American company Sector 9.
For a long time, his work was pretty much what we'd recognise as skate art, loose and full of colour, and it often appeared on public walls. But lately it's as if all the concrete he rode is flowing back out of him. Hawken makes brutalist garden sculpture, cast in concrete from the same urethane his wheels are made of, which isn't a coincidence.
He calls his designs "solves" — the same word used in street-skating culture for working out a way to navigate a buttress or a bench. He's interested in exposing function and letting it force the design — like street skating in reverse.
The style emerged, ironically, at the same time "nek minnit" was brewing. In , Hawken designed and led the painting of a 45m mural in the Leith river tunnel in Dunedin. The artist and poet Hana Aoake wrote that the work "highlights Hawken's active engagement with Modernist conventions and abstraction, as it reflects aspects of German expressionist Franz Marc and a kinetic embodiment of the theories of Kandinsky.
The work is innately autonomous and can also be likened to a tomb, with the sharp lines of a hawk acting as a memento mori for both his late grandfather and close friend who died earlier this year. In this way the lines appear to me to resemble hieroglyphic symbols moving your eye across the wall like an archaeologist studying an ancient inscription.
And Aotea Square was gone and to me Auckland was just going through a real weird phase. I was pissed off about the grey. We also did a big skate event and we built all these ramps and I painted them all grey. Like a protest — but at the same time saying, 'Okay, you want grey? I'll do my art out of grey.
Doing the wrong trick or wearing the wrong thing, listening to the wrong music. So longboards were considered to be ridden by non skateboarders who wanted to get from A to B and labeled kooks. I really enjoyed letting go of that attitude and not giving a fuck any more, being more open minded and trying to be better person. Not for anyone else but for me. If I can be easier on other people I can be easier on myself. I know why. I definitely drifted further away from the skate scene after that.
Then the whole Nek Minnit thing has pushed me away from skate parks too. Trying to ask me about my scooter ha ha…. Lots of road rash! Pain and sitting around talking enormous amounts of bullshit.
I bring a bunch of big ass double kicks with soft bushings and smooth wheels and other sets ups for free ride and even a little fish board. I just want people to learn to turn on a skateboard and find the enjoyment in the simplicity.
Then they can build on it and explore it. They can learn this stuff without risking major injury. Levi Hawken : Recorded?
Levi: It always feels awesome. So many in Wellington! Not a lot of really long runs with a lot of slides needed but we have some good gems. Levi: I fractured my neck on Con Hill when I first got into big boards, paralysed myself from the neck down, took a month before I could stand on my board and push. Had a really heavy bail in SF at about 65kmph on chunder standing tall in a tee shirt. I carved in front of someone and pretty much got pushed off, shattered my thumb and broke a few ribs, so much bruising around my torso and right down into my groin, even my cock was half purple.
Not the best start to 3 week skate trip. I got taken out from behind by someone going super fast at Tepe a few years back, crack my ribs and I had already had someone crash in front of me and give me mad road rash on my second run there. I got a small head so often hard to find a good fitting helmet. My left elbow is mostly scar tissue so I usually wear an elbow pad on it.
Quality of life is so much better with out massive grazes. Not really so much on my standard board with hard wheels. I love skating everything, I just wish my body could still do all the old tricks. It can make me a bit depressed so I just go get sideways at speed instead. One arm is a bit numb from being paralysed and my shoulders itch from it. I find drinking makes my back cease up, I get lazy with the strengthening exercises, lose core strength.
I get urges to drink beer in the daytime, I will drink instead of eating, drink instead of drinking water. Then I will end up having a massive night then wake up and start drinking in the morning. The old party benders patterns come back. Plus drinking kills my skating more than anything else. Levi: I can have a whole skate on DH, free ride or bombing sidewalks without bailing once.
After a session I often feel like I have made myself stronger by skating that shit. But street or park you are constantly trying tricks and having to run out of bails. After a good street skate session my joints will feel wrecked. But as you know, when you have a bad crash at speed, that can really mess your shit up for a while. False Idol no. G-Cube No. Horus No. Apply Clear all.
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