Ritual Grinds

Everyone knows my shtick, so just like the boss doing a FS flip at a demo, I am going to give you what you want. That being, a heady melange of ritualised skateboarding, mythic sculpture, and some grey space simulacra.

Returning to my theme of sacred skateboarding the Spanish ‘Grind to Grind’ collective have got their own little skate fetish going on. While BA. KU. have the Jersey Barrier, Grind to Grind devote themselves to trucks. Their DIY park has coping made of trucks, and they also melt down old trucks and craft them into rails. Why not make your slides grind too?

In their latest video offering they have crafted a giant concrete truck replete with an axle made out of the many old trucks. Here we delve into the simulacra of the truck. It is at once a representation of a real truck, crafted out of… trucks. Its core material is concrete and is thus the primary material of which trucks grind. This concrete being grey is therefore both an overt feature of our discussion and an ambiguous entity, a grey space. It manifests as object, substance, context.

The skateboarding is not merely skateboarding. It is ritualised. A salutation to the act of skateboarding (always) and the object we profess our love to. Act, object, and in this case representation of the facilitator. The fact that Grind to Grind have an altar at their DIY, where trucks and broken boards are burnt is an exemplar. I really don’t need to say more. just watch the video.