The Surfers Journal
Light / Dark
Twenty years after the release of his film The Seedling, which served as a key document of the burgeoning alternative tendency in surf culture, Thomas Campbell plans to soon unveil his latest film, Yi-Wo. This news arrives almost ten years after The Present, his last release, which appeared to be the concluding statement of a loose trilogy of films that included his maiden effort in 1999 and its follow up, Sprout, in 2004.
While it would be misleading to describe this body of work as a cinematic Salon des Refusés, the three films did champion a different set of values than those promoted by the surf mainstream. These tenets were nonetheless deeply rooted in surfing’s past, and from this they derived their legitimacy.
At this present juncture in 2019, when eclecticism seems to be the order of the day, it may be useful to recall that this is a recent development. In essence, the three films released by Campbell over the span of a crucial decade comprise the foundational texts—part objective record, part propaganda—of a movement that arose as an alternative to the ruling paradigm of thruster-driven “performance,” opening new paths, new approaches, and ultimately creating an open space without which today’s “Ride Anything” movement would be unimaginable.
Campbell first located this tendency within the then relatively small community of “traditional” loggers, who rejected the modern approach codified in the judging criteria of the ASP Longboard Tour. Proponents emerged in hot-footed tip riders like Jimmy Gamboa and Dane Peterson, flow masters like Devon Howard, and backside specialists like Kassia Meador, who for almost two decades reigned as queen of traditional longboarders.
Perhaps most importantly, the series found an exemplar of its values in dissident longboard champion Joel Tudor. Tudor’s appearance in all three films lent a sense of continuity to the series. In turn, he was provided with a showcase for his talent and a podium from which he could espouse his views as one of the most respected and articulate spokesmen of non-conformism in surf craft and culture.
The Seedling was of incalculable importance to a generation of surfers who, inspired by Campbell’s film, followed Tudor’s lead and revitalized the ranks of the “traditionalist” wing. This was the milieu from which Alex Knost, Robin Kegel, Jared Mell, and a host of other talented surfers emerged, many of whom make up much of the roster in any given Duct Tape Invitational.
The Seedling was primarily a celebration of “traditional logging” that, at times, seemed to ground its core values in an imaginary, prelapsarian past. However, its follow up, Sprout, released five years later, concentrated primarily on developments after the revolution. It included logging sequences—introducing C.J. Nelson and Alex Knost to the series—but also expanded its scope to include bodyboarder Mike Stewart and bodysurfer Mark Cunningham.
Crucially, its main focus seemed to be on reexamining a variety of “radical” surf-craft designs that emerged during the heady, experimental days of the Transition Era. Rob Machado, Dan Malloy, and Dave Rastovich joined returning members of the cast, called upon to demonstrate the viability of alternative crafts such as Steve Lis fishes, eggs, displacement hulls, and bonzers. These designs were not presented as curiosities, nor as evolutionary dead ends, but as viable vehicles that offer a different experience to the surfer, further opening up the field of possibilities. Extending from there, The Present seemed intended to bring things up-to-date, and to serve as a look forward at a future interwoven with these designs and values.
So what can we expect of the imminent release of another film from Campbell? In the intervening years, he’s returned his focus on his art career, continuing to work in various media, with important gallery shows around the world. During the last decade, he’s also consolidated his position as one of the key figures among the group of upstart artists associated with New York’s Alleged Gallery, a short-lived but highly influential space that promoted the works of young talents who came out of the DIY skate and street art scenes, as captured in the 2008 documentary Beautiful Losers.
Worth noting again is the fact that, in the last decade, the eclectic approach championed by Campbell has become broadly accepted, without controversy. The term retro, often used as an epithet, has largely fallen out of use, in part because of innovations that distinguish today’s surf craft from the original designs that inspired them. The developments following a modern interest in fin-free surfing among Tom Wegener, Derek Hynd, and others have opened new possibilities in wave riding and design concepts. This has occurred alongside parallel advances in asymmetrical design inspired by Carl Ekstrom’s experiments from the 1960s through the present, and taken to new extremes by Ryan Burch, one of the most dynamic surfers to emerge over the last ten years.
Fittingly, Burch is among the cast, along with other mainstays of the alternative wing, including Bryce Young, Craig Anderson, Ozzie Wright, Trevor Gordon, Lauren Hill, Karina Rozunko, and Nick Melanson, plus Knost, Mell, Rastovich, and Tudor. Like its predecessors, the project will clearly feature a carefully selected group of surfers—some of the most highly esteemed wave riders of the day who embody the shared “outsider” ethos that underlies all of Campbell’s films.
The enigmatic title Yi-Wo, however, gives away little, least of all how else this new release stands in relation to his prior work. Is this an extension of the earlier series, or a new beginning? Conversations with the notoriously reticent Campbell indicate that he, like many artists, prefers to let the work speak for itself.
One notable departure may be in the filmmaker’s approach. He has described his earlier films as “educational,” and as such, projects unrelated to his career as a visual artist. Conversely, Yi-Wo claims no such agenda. Freed of any pedagogical purpose, this may be Campbell’s most free-form effort yet.
Coming as its does, at the conclusion of a decade focused on making art, the film is informed by Campbell’s unique aesthetic. The title itself is an example of his penchant for word play, disrupting the function of language as a conveyer of meaning by substituting or subtracting letters, a practice that recurs as a motif in many of his visual works. The few glimpses of the film that Campbell has allowed reveal an even greater attention to formal details, pacing, and the interplay between its imagery and soundtrack. The result seems to be less of an objective record than a reverie, or tonal piece, with a tendency toward abstraction. It’s possible, therefore, that Yi-Wo may bear less relation to his previous films than it does to the main body of visual work that established him as an artist.
[Feature image: Photo by Thomas Campbell.]
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