What means Marble as a collective for you guys and how you would explain it to the people?
Marble is pretty much a group of people doing what they LOVE. Taking care of their spot, shredding the plaza every day and for sure documenting and filming what’s going on in there. Everything started when Louz bought the first VX around 2015. The first tryouts were just filming whatever was happening every day at the Plaza. A bit later on, we started to go on the first early missions to the spots around the outskirts of the city, but pretty much all around Barcelona. Little by little, the map started to get bigger and the missions started to evolve to different cities around Spain: Madrid, Valencia, Vigo, Zaragoza, Mallorca… and obviously the bug progressively evolved into skate European capitals: Prague with Stalin Plaza, Berlin with Warschauer, Milan with Centrale, Copenhagen… Some of these trips were even before Marble existed, but, you know, the classic skate pilgrimage… But if there is a turning point in all this process was the summer after the first VX when we decided to skip another Eurotrip and go straight to China. It was a turning point because ever since then the trips had been reaching further destinations and the world had been expanding. Tokyo, New York, San Francisco, Philly, Las Vegas (with or without much skating), Hong Kong, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzen, and the list goes on and on… But the whole point of all this is that all these trips and moments, combined with the everydaylife plaza, are basically what our videos are made of.
Basically, everything born at SNT, always following the philosophy that the OG’s from there taught us (Gómez, Raul Navarro, Pabli Dominguez, Koth, Julio…) and just having the will do something without having to wait for anybody doing things for you. We decided to rebuild the plaza that had given us so much even if we had to do it spending our own money, buying the camera and spending our holidays to travel with the only purpose of stacking clips and having a good time. Also during this last year, after seen that the hype on Marble started to grow we decided to start doing even clothing collections. But I guess that is something that you learn from being in the streets every day, that if you want something you have to do it yourself and that’s exactly what and how we have been doing it so far. Without anyother goal behind it, just because this is the way we feel it.
Is only skateboarding the main thing that surround your lifes?
No way! hahahah skateboarding is definitely a big part of all our lives, but most of us have our 9 to 17 jobs like the rest of human beings. Louz is a teacher in a primary school, Martin works in publicity, Josep is an architect, Bruno is a tuner and many others combine their studies with skateboarding. But I guess that’s the beauty of it too, you appreciate way more what skateboarding means and you quickly realize that is not just about doing tricks on the biggest stairs, so I guess we have to continue saving the world in the office..hahaha. Our understanding of skateboarding is just go down to the plaza to be with the homies, tell some crazy stories about how fucked it the people at our jobs, grind our favourite salmon colouerd granite and have some beers meanwhile we do all those things. The only struggle actually comes when we want to organize tours because we have to sync everybody’s vacations so we can go all together to film somewhere and travel around the world. But it always ends up working out one way or another.
The way you work guys are really amazing, its like you three together became a only one in the last Marble 3 video. How the fuck you organized all the work without wanted to kill each other? Hahaha thank you! Seemed like you were talking about the Holy Trinity ahahaha. I guess you are referring to Erques Torres, Martin Verástegui and Marcos Lozano, right? In fact, the process had been evolving very naturally and spontaneously actually. Louz bought the first VX and he started filming like 4 or 5 years ago as I mentioned.
By then, Martin was already working for his advertising agency, where he often does edits for ads or clips for their clients, so by that time he already knew how to work with the editing program Premiere and was very hyped by the idea of editing the first video we did. The first one was actually filmed by Louz and edited by Martin and Louz. And to be honest, if we look back at and watch it again it’s unavoidable to laugh at it… What a change! The second video was edited by Martin but then it’s when the key element and our third man came into place and joined the team. Erques Torres is actually Martins coworker and they literally sit in front of each other every day at work. So during the process of editing the second video, Erques noticed how Martin was taking some time off from work to edit the video at the office when he was supposed to be working on a campaign hahaha! By that time everybody from SNT already knew Erques because we would all party together since he was Martin’s friend. And although he has nothing to do with the skateboarding world, he thought that would be a very interesting idea to collaborate with us. He was actually hyped to help on the project without any kind of interest. Merely because he became a homie and that friendship made us closer.
That’s pretty much how the three of us fit perfectly, it is a team and everybody understands the role they play in it. Louz is the Master lens behind the VX. Martin is the Master Premiere and takes care of the editing and Erques is the Master Animation, taking care of that aspect, doing different graphics and designing the clothing collections. Besides these three, it is important also to mention the work of David Susko, Axel Serrat and Quel Sunday which are also part of the crew and that always help with graphic support and photos that we have sometimes exposed at the premieres. At the end of the day everything comes out from the plaza and it is for the plaza. SNT4EVER!
The level of the tricks and almost more important the spots for these tricks are like a beautiful synesthesia skater/filmer. Is this planned from the beginning? Do you guys use to go somewhere for a concrete spot for film a concrete trick?
Not really! Of course we are always looking for new spots and this is why we have travelled so much in the last years. But as we all know, many times you are looking for a specific spot for a specific trick and then when you get there and you try the trick in mind you quickly realize that is not possible. So most of the times we plan a route to hit different spots and we go as many as possible. The good thing about that is that there will be always someone skating, and that motivates the rest to try something. Good example of that is the time that we got to a double set that only Xino (Ales Amor) wanted to skate. At first, nobody even dared to try a single trick and when they saw Xino jumping down the stairs little by little Bruno and Axel fired up started skating it too, to a point all three ended up getting tricks and clips on it. So what we try to do is to go to the maximum of different spots possible so that everyone has the chance to skate and to see how this motivates the rest, so at the end of the day there are clips stacked and everyone had a session.
Regarding the relationship filmer-skater. That’s a connection that only is achieved when you have been filming a lot with a person. The framing, the way of skating, the timing of the trick, the position of the camera… each of these elements is something that you have to work on it and it had to get, but can only be achieved when you have been skating and filming with a person for a long time. Now Louz is filming different clips for personal projects that will be dropping out soon and he always based it on the same principle, he has to film with someone with whom he has feeling. He doesn’t want to go film with a random dude that has never meet before, I mean that it is in itself a very awkward situation, isn’t it? To sum up, and as we said, everything is an organic process where things just happen by themselves or because they feel this way and makes sense to do it. Like this interview, that was planned a night at SNT after meeting you guys on a sesh. It might sound lame but pretty much is just go with the flow…
Talking about spots and Barcelona, what is the main diference for you guys between SANTS and for example MACBA or other places for skate in the city?
Barcelona has a thousand things more than MACBA and SNT luckily! hahaha. There are much more people doing things like the Sentfields crew at Spotter or Toni Lopez, Alberto Castor and all the guys from Badalona working at La Bobila and thousand of DIY projects that from our point of view deserve much more respect than just skating a classic spot every day that has been there for ages. This mentality of just sitting down at the famous spot is actually not doing something for the scene and you just end up watching pros come and go and by the time you realize, years have been passing and you haven’t done anything. Locals change and if you don’t do a shit nobody will remember you.
At the end of the day, skateboarding has always been based on Do It Yourself, like Rocco with World Industries or Girl doing it on their own. They were just kids skating and doing what they liked. The same mentality applies to every aspect of skateboarding. It doesn’t matter if you build a ramp, make a brand or design your own promodel.
Big ups to the whole DIY around the world and to the people that fight for their spot. That’s what it’s all about. As far as SNT, right now it’s a DIY spot in the middle of the city, the plaza is abandoned and destroyed after the construction of the new high-speed train. No one knows exactly how the future of the spot will look like and how long it will last but that won’t make us leave the spot. We will keep it alive until it’s dust. Regarding Macba, now they started to move around to try to save it because the neighbours were collecting signatures to try to shut it down and make it unskatable.
So if things are done well it would be a unique opportunity for Barcelona, not only to save the now classic Plaça dels Angels also known as MACBA, but also to set a stepping point to be able to dialog and open relations with the city council. So that could be a chance for the city to understand the relevance that skateboarding has in Barcelona and start a path where we can see more skateable urban spaces. This might sound ironic saying it about Barcelona where there is a spot every 50 meters but it could create an opportunity to stop seeing skatestoppers at spots and to don’t have to run from the police if you see them coming at you by just integrating skateboarding into the public society.
A good example of that are cities like Malmo in Sweden, Copenhague in Denmark, where they have it all figured out or the well known Southbank in London. We hope that the people that are now fighting for MACBA will make the right decisions and won’t look at their personal interest, but for the interest of the city. The most important point about saving MACBA or to be able to talk to the city council is to be able to create more skate urban spaces so that we don’t get all crowded in one particular spot, to avoid skater congestions, more exactly in the city centre.
Especially those situations come from people who come from outside and don’t respect anything. Because obviously the locals want to keep skating their own city, but the reason of closing Macba is because those who think this is a party-skate city and I can do «whatever I want whenever I want» give the right reasons to the wrong people to build the argument to shut down the spot. With all that said, there are obviously people coming to skate the city that are respectful, but we all know the kind of person we are talking about. So about MACBA and the possibility of closing it, we hope that this will never happen.
Thanks guys! Was fantastic to know more about the guys behind this characteristics and own-shine videos. Something to say to the readers?
I guess this is the question where we are supposed to start giving shout outs! hahaha But for real we would like to thank everybody on the process of making these projects possible, in front and behind the camera, and thank also those who are not even exposed to even any kind of camera but that go alongside with us. If there is something to learn from all this is that if you want to do something just go and do it. People will tell you constantly how crazy you are and in how many ways things are not gonna work but after a while, they will start saying: “I should start doing it too.” Last, but not least, thank you guys also for the interview and big big big ups to all the SNT locals from each generation. Is crazy to remember the first day at the plaza and how far this is going. If the cat statue on top of the roof could talk I’m pretty sure we could write a best-seller. SNT4EVER.
