[title]
Ah, the ’90s—a simpler time when grainy camcorder videos ruled the cultural zeitgeist, rather than slickly produced TikToks. An upcoming exhibit at Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) will pay homage to that era through the lens of skater culture.
"Recording the Ride: The Rise of Street-Style Skate Videos" will honor DIY filmmaking with videos, vintage skate decks and other objects related to the formative years of the skate video in the 1980s and 1990s. See it in Astoria from September 7, 2024 through January 26, 2025.
RECOMMENDED: The best museum exhibitions in NYC right now
With limited budgets and cheap video equipment, skaters recorded their limit-pushing tricks on stairs, benches, and other skate-able elements of public architecture. These grainy videos of bodies in flight were set to music-driven montages on VHS-format videos, often with a defining fish-eye lens.
The videos circulated among skaters and in skate shops serving as both inspiration and instruction. They became a form of proto social media that knitted the community together. Skating and skating videos became linked as complementary forms or artistic expression.
"Rising from the roots of the mid-1980s classics, 1990s skate videos refined and cemented an aesthetic that remains foundational to this day," said Jacob Rosenberg, a filmmaker who served as the exhibit's co-curator. "It's long overdue for this rich form of cultural and artistic documentation to be explored and presented by a museum."
1990s skate videos refined and cemented an aesthetic that remains foundational to this day.
The exhibit will feature releases by Powell Peralta, H-Street, Plan B, World Industries, Girl, Birdhouse, 411, Zoo York, and more. Highlights include artifacts from the production of The Bones Brigade Video Show (1984); a focus on Mike Ternasky and the brand Plan B, with vintage production and post-production artifacts used in the making of their seminal releases The Questionable Video (1992) and Virtual Reality (1993). Also expect to see behind-the-scenes images, including photos shot by Spike Jonze—whose filmmaking career began with the production of skate videos—on the set of Video Days (1991).
The show includes material on loan from skaters and skate video pioneers such as Lance Mountain, Jamie Thomas, R.B. Umali, Greg Hunt, Jon Holland, Jamie Mosberg, Rick Howard, and Ty Evans.
Fittingly, a series of screenings and events will accompany the exhibition.
"The impact of skate videos extends beyond the skateboard community to art, fashion, sports, music, film, and more," according to MoMI Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs Barbara Miller. "With our expansive view of the moving image as a reflection and building block of vernacular culture, MoMI is the ideal cultural institution to look at the origins of this essential genre."
In addition to Miller and Rosenberg, director Michaela Ternasky-Holland also served as a co-organizer of the exhibition.
The show will kick off on Saturday, September 7, at 5:30pm with the program "Skate Video Essentials: The Legacy of Mike Ternasky," featuring a screening of Plan B’s Virtual Reality and a discussion with skateboard legend Matt Hensley.