coffee high 2013
Coffee High 2011-2013
This is my current action art documentary. It is a study in minimalism travel and survival, media gathering and story creation.
I take a skateboard, a gopro video and digital snapshot cameras, sound recorder, a tent, a water filter and an italian moka coffee set, up into the mountains.
Along the way I encounter an intense, awesome nature, hardened yet very friendly people, amazing chinese-engineered roadways, and I skate. Weeks and weeks on the road, I travel for 1000, for 1400 kilometers, living up above 2500, 3500, even 4500 meters in altitude.
This is an experience, an intense physical and mental exertion, an exercise in navigation through a foreign and forbidding environment. This is a story in the making.
First, I went to Yunnan and skated 220 km just to see if i could do it.I recorded the exercise with a still camera and sound recorder, and I drew images upon return to illustrate the journey. Wrapping it up with a voiceover, I got the basic idea going in 2011.
Skate TrekYunnan 2011
Next, in the spring of 2012, I went on a longer trek, 950Km up to a glacier on the edge of the Tibet regions.
Skate to the GlacierPart 1 of 3 2012. You can watch all three parts on vimeo
Finally in autumn of 2012, I skate trekked 1405 Km across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, from 3500 m on the Ruo er Gai Grasslands to a monastery in Dege, Sichuan, where monks print woodblock prayer books. Returning 4500 m up and over Rabbit Mountain, passing Shangrila, and down again through the Tiger Leaping Gorge. This video is a documentation of cutting and printing an image, which tells the story of my journey, and is in postproduction as we speak...
Visit the travel blog to learn more about this skate trekking... maxwillis.net/skatetreks