London has a new Museum of Skateboarding. But before you dust off your Vans, be warned: this is not a public institution on the South Bank dedicated to outsize shorts, broken wrists and the unseasonal wearing of beanie hats. It’s in an art gallery.
The work of Russian artist Kirill Savchenkov, the “museum” opened at London’s Calvert 22 last week. Addressing the deathlessly hip sport mock-anthropologically, it’s an exhibition that gazes back, as if from the near future, to a fantasy New Skateboarder culture – in which the urban skater is a kind of warrior monk or rōnin on wheels.
Growing up in the suburbs of Moscow, Savchenkov started skating in his early teens, before an injury pushed him out of active participation and into the role of street photographer. From there he went to art school, and became fascinated, in retrospect, by how his wheeled perambulation had taught him to appraise Moscow’s modernist structures for their raw potential as skate sites rather than expressions of ideology.
Savchenkov sees skateboarding as a route to exploring questions of sporting discipline as well as our relationship to the built environment. “There is a physical aspect of the practice: when you fail a trick, you could feel pain, fear or anger, but you are supposed to overcome all of this,” he says. “At the same time, skateboarding shapes the way you look at the city: you identify shapes and forms as suitable or not for skating. Sometimes you encounter security guards, or other subcultures that could cause conflicts ... Obstacles become a resource.”
His museum is in the mould of those eccentric institutions dedicated to long-dead communities of bog-dwellers or seal-worshippers: an agglomeration of artefacts, marks and symbols, not all of which have a clear meaning or purpose. Savchenkov has penned hieroglyphs on the gallery walls, inspired by the diagrams etched on the golden records carried by Voyager spacecrafts. The simple line drawings detail sequences of ritualistic movement such as routes for tricks, and illustrate the New Skateboarder’s somewhat impenetrable theosophy.
Shards of different paving surfaces – marble, asphalt, granite and composite – are borne aloft on a metal armature like devotional relics. “The surface has a special place in skateboarding,” Savchenkov says. “You try to find a way in the city with a nice comfortable surface – fresh asphalt or concrete is preferable to paving stones. Skaters migrate if the surface becomes unsuitable.”
Several videos are displayed inside tubular metal sculptures inspired by the railings and gym equipment commonly repurposed by skaters. One depicts combat manoeuvres inspired by the spiralling movement sequences used in martial arts. Savchenkov worked with revered Russian skater-turned-fitness trainer Ashot Shaboyan to create a viable technique for using a skateboard as both weapon and shield. Savchenkov then imagines himself fending off aggressive factions such as neo-Nazis. Another film gives a glimpse of the city from a skater’s viewpoint. The passage through Moscow’s parks, plazas, metro and office blocks becomes a dogged quest for ledges, slopes, drainpipes and low-friction surfaces.
While skating’s Californian roots still flavour its garb and culture globally, Savchenkov sees each place as generating its own ethos and identifiable style. “Local environment influences the community of skaters and their relations with power, private property and city space,” he says, recalling how skaters in Moscow entered office buildings at night when there was less chance of encountering guards.
A “practice manual” – the holy book of Savchenkov’s imagined New Skateboarder – features an exercise routine alongside mantras, breath work and philosophical epigrams (“The serious problems we encounter must not be solved on the same level of thought as that on which they arose”), aimed at honing the New Skateboarder as a mindful combatant. The manual exhorts readers to become “as one” with their “internal witness”. Line drawings of a bearded hipster Jesus figure demonstrate quasi-yogic positions such as the “boat”, “butterfly” and “static chair”.
In conceiving his skateboarding warriors, Savchenkov drew on his experience of a teenage esprit de corps. “I think skateboarders see themselves like rebel forces, trying to enter private property or finding new skate spots through reconnaissance,” he says. “Invading places you are not supposed to be at night, or jumping over fences into restricted territories – all of this can make you feel like you are doing something against the law (which, actually, is not true) or acting against the government of the city space.”
This future generation of ollie-popping urban warriors may be limber, focused and generally Zen, but in certain aspects they remain unenlightened. Bad news for all the skater girls out there grinding handrails in their local parks: Savchenkov’s New Skateboarding is portrayed as a boys-only affair. “There should not be a question of gender in this practice,” says the artist, explaining his beard-centric portrayal merely reflects the status quo. For the present, at least, the female half of the population is NFI to this particular survivalist party.
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Museum of Skateboarding is at Calvert 22, London, until 11 September.
