Mike Mag interview

My name is Michael Magal­hães, most people know me as Mike Mag. I’m a Brazili­an skater, I live on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro sur­roun­ded by nature, col­or, and chaos. I star­ted skat­ing in Palm Beach, Flor­ida where I also grew up dur­ing a golden age of inde­pend­ent and homie videos. For this video part, I wanted to only film on spots that aes­thet­ic­ally attract me in their form and essence. The Oscar Niemey­er quote that opens the video sums it up best. What attracts me the most in spots are curvy lines, col­or­ful back­grounds, abstract forms. The idea was to only include spots which don’t have any straight lines, no 90° angles; organ­ic forms only. Brazil is not Europe, there aren’t per­fect curvy ledges and rails and manu­al pads every­where. The spots are few, rough, nev­er per­fect, and the infra­struc­ture isn’t exactly refined. Nat­ur­ally I was forced to little by little revert back to nature to meet the cri­ter­ia of the concept. Organ­ic forms like tree roots, rocks, moun­tains, cliffs, water­falls. Soon enough I was tak­ing mis­sions to the Amazon to skate the Leopard’s paw, and the indi­gen­ous warrior’s wave. I designed a cri­ter­ia for the forms of the spots of the video, think­ing it would be like a European video part with lots of cool curvy ledges. But being in Brazil, I had to do it the Brazili­an way. The fur­ther I went down the river the more wild and sav­age the video part became. I had gone all the way, skate mis­sions on boats into the wild unknown with cam­era bags on our backs and skate­boards in hand, in hopes of find­ing a water­fall that is some­how mira­cu­lously skateable.

The video ref­er­ences Brazili­an archi­tect Oscar Niemey­er; which par­al­lels would you say are to draw between Mr. Niemey­er­’s approach to urb­an space, design and its dis­tri­bu­tion and skate­board­ing as a prac­tice at large and on your own level of activ­ity? Con­crete facil­it­ates skate­board­ing and yet — almost in oppos­i­tion — a lot of the spots being activ­ated in your video are nat­ur­al, either of organ­ic nature or man-made but then for­got­ten off the beaten path until more prof­it­able use of the land is found. A lot of them also would be qual­i­fied as ‘non-spots’ [sic] by ped­es­tri­ans, which hints at their value being par­tic­u­larly intrins­ic. How did you end up with such a spe­cif­ic selec­tion of sur­faces, struc­tures and objects and what would you say may be the cru­cial cri­ter­ia that decided on what would or would­n’t make inter­est­ing footage? 

The work of Oscar Niemey­er is often inspired by the land­scapes of Brazil, his archi­tec­ture is like a street skater’s wet dream. It’s hard to believe he’s not a skater. Nature and beauty is what we have the most here in Brazil, the same nature and beauty that inspired this great archi­tect also inspired the spot selec­tion for the part. What it more simply came down to is a lack of tra­di­tion­al real spots that fit the cri­ter­ia, but an abund­ance of infin­ite unskated wild and nat­ur­al moth­er earth. To make it in the video, the spot needs to have bright col­ors, and inter­est­ing forms. Skat­ing by the ocean you can fill the frame with blue, in the middle of the jungle green, we would search everything from organ­ic rock forms that have been shaped into a ramp by mil­lions of years of rain­fall, to mod­ern man-made sculp­tures that reflect things in nature.

How per­son­al would you say a spot needs to feel for you in order to be most com­fort­able skat­ing it? The approach of some of the most remark­able skate­boarders such as Mark Gonzales or Bobby Puleo, but also the vibrancy of skate­board­ing clips and videos in gen­er­al only make the most sense when a dir­ect con­nec­tion and implied motiv­a­tion is sens­ible in the foot­age. It is observ­able but unde­cipher­able and a fun­da­ment­al ele­ment that defines style. Nur­tur­ing this calls for hav­ing a cer­tain eye for tex­tures, mater­i­als and shapes and thus adjust­ing focus on phys­ic­al real­ity over cog­nit­ive rep­res­ent­a­tions; then more factors must come into play, includ­ing the sub­ject’s back­ground and the lifelong his­tory of their rela­tion­ship with their envir­on­ment. What would you describe makes your eye?

Oh, it can be very per­son­al, and very intim­ate as well. I’m sure this hap­pens to most any skater; but once in a blue moon you stumble upon a spot so beau­ti­ful, so per­fect, so made for you that you just gotta have it. You become infatu­ated, stoked, know what trick its call­ing you for and the desire to skate it burns hot­ter than nor­mal. It hap­pens to me, I see it hap­pen to my friends, its the most beau­ti­ful thing. I must brag I have a well trained eye, everyone’s eye is dif­fer­ent, my friends can often see things I can’t and vice versa. My eye has been trained by a life­time of skate videos and magazines, and just being out­side in the streets, skat­ing with my friends, exchan­ging ideas, and doing fun little challenges.

The high­light on phys­ic­al­ity also is evoked via more quotes and then (some­times sharp) sen­su­al­ity not just in the con­tact but also visu­al in the shapes; lots of curves, waves and caress­ing, pinch­ing, embra­cing or tap­ping man­euvers applied to them. Which par­al­lels would you draw between the energy, drive and work some people put into skate­board­ing or oth­er crafts, and all the love an indi­vidu­al can only express? How big of an impact on you was the open­ing inter­view to Gou Miy­agi’s part in Takahiro Mor­it­a’s clas­sic video, OVERGROUND BROADCASTING?

I am a very express­ive per­son, and I don’t know how to love just a little. Skate­board­ing with my friends and film­ing skate videos with them is the biggest love of my life. I try to show in my skat­ing the intim­ate dance we do with this burn­ing rela­tion­ship with skate­board­ing. I do my best to hug the spot, dance with it, and kiss the street on the mouth when I have to. Much like the great Gou Miy­agi, I lust for this kind of stuff.

You will be vis­it­ing Croa­tia this year to attend the screen­ing of « CURVED UNIVERSE » and much more. How exper­i­enced a trav­el­er are you by now, which part has your activ­ity as a skate­boarder played in nur­tur­ing curi­os­ity for new places, and when and how did you first hear about the coun­try of Croa­tia, the city of Pula, the town of Fažana and the people of Vladimir?

I’d like to believe I’m a well-seasoned trav­el­er, I’m lucky enough in life to have vis­ited a high­er than aver­age amount of beau­ti­ful places in this world. Skate­board­ing has always been a tool for me to explore the world. It took me from my house, to the neigh­bor­hood, to the city, to the oth­er side of the world, and even­tu­ally to Vladi­mir. Oh, the places you’ll go. But I have rook­ie num­bers com­pared to some of the top well traveled skaters I look up to, like Kenny Reed, Michael Mack­rodt, Pat­rik Wall­ner, Walk­er Ryan. Being a skate video nerd, I have known of Vladi­mir for some years; it always soun­ded like a dream to me, a real film fest­iv­al for skate­board­ing. I was fas­cin­ated. While film­ing for a part called “OWN LITTLE WORLD”, we did a trip to Split. It was dur­ing this trip that I learned Europe’s little secret. Croa­tia, a land made of the most but­tery ledges and best mater­i­als for skat­ing. No wax neces­sary. A truly enchanted coun­try with a pleth­ora of amaz­ing skate spots.

Thanks a lot for answer­ing all this whilst pressed on time. Now is shout out time if there is any­one you would like to thank in return. I wish you a great Vladimir.

I thank my par­ents for always sup­port­ing me and my adven­tures in skate­board­ing. Cayo Uchôa the fear­less filmer of the video along with Adonis Per­feito and Santi Brandi­marti. The Magenta fam­ily, Vivi­en Feil, Soy Panday, and Leo Valls. Teak at 561 Skate­board­ing. CPT Mafia. The good people at Vladi­mir for wel­com­ing me with open arms to their fest­iv­al, and any­one I have ever had the pleas­ure of shar­ing a skate ses­sion with. It takes a vil­lage to make a video like this, so many friends helped along the way of each adven­ture. Thank you all.