Tag: Giorgi Armani

Last week we celebrated the start of the 10-year anniversary of Nozbone’s Benchmark contest. Starting in Berlin and concluding last Sunday in Paris. And a sun-filled day it was. It felt like spring had hit us again for a day, which turned the day into somewhat of a festival.

With the mood set, let’s get into the skating. It was culminating in some amazing skating by people like John Purcell, Hugo Corbin, Giorgi Armani, Farid Ulrich and Nozbone’s own Marc-A Barbier who, in the end, took home the win.

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We think Nike SB, Civilist, Nozbone and À Propos magazine did a great job this year and we hope to be back next year.

Last Saturday marked the start of this year’s Benchmark Contest’s. The 2017 series is special because it is the tenth year that Paris’s Nozbone is organizing this event and thus they chose to partner up with Berlin’s Civilist skate shop and have two contests instead of one.

That meant that the winner of the Berlin event would earn himself some money and a ticket to skate in the Paris event this coming weekend.

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The concept for this year was to incorporate Bauhaus as a style element.

 

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You might recognize this man, he built the obstacles.

 

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The course was not only used to skate on, some parkour went down as well.

 

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The crowd was colorful and of all ages.

 

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This guy skated the course the entire time but did not enter the contest!?

 

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A closer look at the result of Kliewer’s build.

 

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To his own surprise, this Georgian wunderkind almost took the top spot.

 

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We would consider this a cryptogramic self portrait of Mr. TPDG himself. Dogs and cameras always a sure thing.

 

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The old in and out with two German legends.

 

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Denny Pham finished third but still managed to please the crowd.

 

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If you look closely you can see Giorgi doing his second place line.

 

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In the end the French took the title back to Paris, Hugo Corbin came out on top!

We are proud to host the probably last skate event for summer 2017. The Benchmark Contest takes their format to Berlin for the very first time and here is all the information you need:

“For its tenth year, the Nozbone Benchmark Contest presented by Nike Skateboarding goes to Berlin on September 16th to meet Civilist before heading back to Paris on the 24th.

Two stages for this international edition which rules remain the same since 2008: doing a line of tricks on benches and the different obstacles built specially for the event, inspired by the artistic style born in the early days of the 20th century in Berlin: the Bauhaus.

Winner of the Berlin contest at ‘Spot der Visionäre’ will share a total prize purse of € 1.500 and will be flown out the OG Paris event.”

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Marca Barbier, Hugo Corbin, Giorgi Armani, Sami Harithi & Farid Ulrich are all meeting at the intersection, where it seems that Paris abruptly becomes Berlin.

For its tenth year, the Nozbone Skateshop Benchmark Contest presented by Nike Skateboarding goes to Berlin on September 16th to meet Civilist before heading back to Paris on the 24th. We are glad to invite you all!

Filmed by Peter Buikema & Augustin Giovannoni.

If you have ever been to Berlin chances are you have heard somebody scream HACK HACK! But what is Hack Hack and what does it mean? What are those videos popping up with Hack in the title, and who is behind them? The answers to those and many other questions were answered when we connected with Farid Ulrich and Vincent Heller.

Interview by Roland Hoogwater.

What is Hack Hack?

Farid
That is hard to define! While we were traveling through South America people often asked us the same question… How did we explain it again?

Vince
It is a vibe Hack Hack is the moment that you get hyped to do something. It originated in Bar 25 it where we were looking for motivation to do something. Along the way, the word trickled out of the bar, onto the streets and into skateboarding. It was a joke and it has turned into somewhat of a saying.

What was the first Hack moment you can remember?

Vince
Bar 25… that must have been 2010, I think… That is when the first Hack happened.

It made me think of Hakken a high energy Dutch dance style from the 90’s.

Farid
Ah… Do you mean those people with track suits and shaved heads?

Yes! (illustrates dance)

Vince
That suits the meaning of Hack too! Those guys were certainly hyped!

Back to Hack Hack, how did you guys get the idea to make videos?

Farid
We sit together to edit, smoke and try and make the best of the footage. Two heads have more ideas than one.

Vince
I film more than I edit because I noticed I don’t have the patience to just sit there. At the same time, Farid has a good feeling for what works.

What was the first Hack video?

Farid
The first Hack video we did was Hackelona, after that, we released CopenHacken and Hack Hack is our third video.

Vince
I started filming during our travels, I always carried a camera and I started playing around with it more and more. So the video happened when we started taking the camera along for our Berlin sessions. So instead of documenting our travels, it became more of a day to day thing.

The funny thing is we did not plan to make a full length, we just started to edit footage, linking certain things together. After a while, we watched the result and thought ” Oh..this works maybe we should create an actual video.”.
So then we made parts, separate from one another and then we tried to fit those parts together. It was kind of like a puzzle.

I got a flashback to Radio Skateboards “Radioactive Kids” when I watched the video. It showed me a kind of Berlin that I did not think existed anymore.

Vince
That is exactly what we wanted, documenting our lives in Berlin and by our I mean all that cross our path.

Farid
When you see the video you have to keep in mind the fact that these people are not all in the same crew. Vince and I just move in between crews and documented what we saw.

Vince
In the end, we turned it into one big Hack family.

Farid
We did not want to compromise, we wanted to show the people we liked and have them skate to the music we liked!
Often I work with people when I make a video part so it was important for our project to reflect us.

So, It is not like watching a homie video, it is a scene being documented.

Farid
Yes, plus the people that visited the City.

Did you show Hack Hack to people in South America?

Farid
We did, we watched it multiple times and it took me back in time, back to these places. It was a real good feeling! Hack Hack!

What about the footage from that trip, Will there be another Hack?

Farid
It took me some time but yesterday I started checking the footage from that tour and there will be something. At the same time Joscha Aicher and Daniel Ledermann are staying with us so maybe one of them will jump down a building or something.

Vince
The next Hack will be a video focused on South and North America, that will take us some time, with editing and all.

Farid
International Hack

Or Hackernational

Vince
It will be called something like that. First I want to focus on editing and summer in Berlin, I will pack my camera in my backpack and we will see what happens. Maybe this winter we will make the final Hack videos but who knows.

Farid
I just want to say we are not interested in being clean or great filming we want to show our lives and if there is a glitch somewhere we will include it, watch it and laugh about it.

Farid
That is exactly how I filmed my last trick. I was playing around and got the idea to manual over the tracks.

Vince
Just a Smoked out idea!

Farid
And an hour later it was done.

Vince
I think for a lot of people the Hack experience feels like a break from sponsored life. No main spots just hanging out and looking for the next spot. With a high chance of drinking a beer at the end of the day.

Thank you guys and HACKHACK!

When we came up with the idea to make an issue about the different approaches of how to portray or depict a person’s identity and character, we thought about the possibility of psychoanalysis early on. More precisely, we considered the method of personality tests seemed to be an interesting field for our concerns.

A person who, on the one hand, is primarily specialized in analyzing people, but on the other unfamiliar with our subject and the world of skateboarding, would probably offer a whole different perspective on a person’s character than interviews usually tend to do.

To lessen the ease of the task a bit, we chose a test person with a very unique appearing character: Giorgi Balkhamishvili. I have personally known Giorgi for a very long time now. We grew up together – I can only barely remember the times before we entered one another’s lives, and we always have remained very close friends. I would argue that Giorgi has a character that is very complex and thus hard to read, especially for someone not knowing him. Even today, although I have known him for so many years and am prepared for every unthinkable quirk of Giorgi’s infamous “five minutes,” he still manages to surprise me from time to time, causing me to ask myself once again if I really know him as well as I think I do. The funny thing is, I always have the feeling that Giorgi secretly enjoys these moments when his actions confuse people, particularly his close friends. Having said this, I was really curious about what this whole experiment would result in. I was interested in how the questions would look like and how precisely one would be able to draw conclusions from the answers.

The personality test we used contained 100 questions that one had to answer with one out of five levels of accuracy, from very accurate to very inaccurate. The questions all followed a similar pattern – They were rather short and aimed at deciphering, or revealing, different character traits: “Do you seldom daydream?” “When you hang out with a group of people, are you bothered by at least one of them?” “Do you know how to get around the rules?” “Do you have a dark outlook on the future?” On top, there were some cognitive ability questions included as well: “Miriam and Adam went fly fishing and caught 32 salmons. Miriam got three times more than Adam. How many did Adam get?” Due to the fact that the test was kind of more a self-assessment, the psychologist included a personal interview at the very beginning in order to get some background information on what sort of context Giorgi’s later answers would be based on. The whole procedure took about three hours and Giorgi patiently answered each question truthfully.

From my point of view, the result was amazingly close to what my own impression of Giorgi is. Moreover, which was less surprising for me than for the analyst, Giorgi’s personality results indeed ended up differing quite a bit from the so-called “average” person. But no worries, at the end of the session, he was allowed to leave the building without subjected to a white straightjacket!

Intro by Paul Röhrs
Photos: Danny Sommerfeld

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Meeting Giorgi Armani
by Roos Cornelius, Psychology (Bsc), Philosophy of Social Science (BA)

I first met Giorgi Balkhamishvili on the 29th of May, in Berlin. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and countless amounts of pollen were wafting from tree to tree, declaring the end of Spring just as I arrived to the place where we would meet.

Giorgi told me he moved from Georgia to Berlin with his parents when he was only six months old. Growing up un a creative environment (both his parents are artists) and with the streets of Berlin as a background, he discovered skateboarding at the age of twelve. Although both his arms were bruised when we met, he described skating as a weightless feeling of endless possibilities. He was sure to let me know, before making a jump, he sometimes taps three times on the ground with his skateboard to prevent him from falling too hard. Giorgi also told me about how he does not drink alcohol, but that one time he drank four liters of beer in one night just to win a bet. Most interestingly, Giorgi admitted that he likes to play with the idea of being in prison – a curious desire for someone who has never even committed a felony… At least, as of yet. One might wonder what character could be behind such thoughts. In the following section, I will attempt to capture a glimpse of Giorgi’s personality.

Results with handwritten comments

Inside Giorgi Armani
by Roos Cornelius, Psychology (Bsc), Philosophy of Social Science (BA)

To assess Giorgi’s personality, I used an online personality test. Just as most personality tests, it focuses on the basic dimensions of one’s personality, such as extraversion, honesty, and emotional stability. Although a personality test is never flawless, this semi-scientific inventory is designed to be objective. Hence, the results may not necessarily be flattering to whom the data concerns. What secrets could it reveal about Giorgi’s personality?
First of all, the test indicated that he possesses some very admirable character traits. His results show that he scored exceedingly high on modesty. This means his personality bestows him with a humble attitude, both toward others and toward his own accomplishments. In addition, Giorgi scored high on compassion. Compassion is characterized by the ability to recognize the emotions of others. The result suggested that he might be sensitive to social conflicts that exist in his surroundings. Giorgi’s results also indicated that he has a strong capacity to feel sympathy for others.

Another interesting hint we may take from the test results concerns the fact that Giorgi scored curiously low on honesty. This indicates that he might be prone to mislead others, especially those who represent considerable authority. This also suggests that he tends to be less troubled by rule-breaking behavior. He might also be considered more creative, since he is less concerned with following established rules. Giorgi also scored particularly low in the realm of conscientiousness. His results implied that he has a tendency to live in the moment and to act on what feels good. He does not pay much attention to detail and probably has a laid back attitude in general. As a result, some might perceive him as a little careless, maybe even disorganized.
Lastly, Giorgi scored remarkably high on boldness. Boldness represents the ability to face uncertain or even threatening situations with confidence. His results suggested that he is able to face uncertain circumstances with emotional stability. Some emotionally stable individuals may go as far seeking out thrilling situations, because they perceive these situations to be less threatening than most people.

To conclude, I would say Giorgi has a creative personality that tends to avoid rules, but one that yearns to take risks. His character consists of qualities that seem to be ever in search of the next jump, the next thrilling moment, before looping back touching solid ground again.

The test that was used for this article is part of the online SAPA Project, initiated by William Revelle (Northwestern University, Illinois). The test can be found on www.sapa-project.org

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The test was quite intense. I had to think about questions that I usually wouldn’t have bothered myself with. In the end, I had the feeling that my hair had turned grey. Ain’t shocking. – Giorgi Armani 

We would like to invite you to the launch of PLACE Issue 57 “A Portrait”
For this event, we want to take you with us and celebrate things “Berlin Style” at a Spätkauf.

Our new issue is focusing on the age-old art of portraying: people, moments, things and emotions. We challenged ourselves in new ways! Stop by and have a drink with us.

Head over to our Facebook event for more info and updates.

PLACE Issue 57 Features:

Dane Brady, Jerry Hsu, Kevin Rodrigues, Jun Song, Sarah Parson-Texas, and Giorgi Armani.

Today we proudly announce the second out of three winners for the PLACE and adidas Skateboarding 3Stripes3Tricks Video Contest: Giorgi Armani! We are really stoked on the three tricks he submitted on his Instagram profile to enter the competition. One is on a tricky ledge, one is down some very popular stairs and the last is a really good rail trick that completes this clip. Congratulations!

The contest is not over yet! Next week we’ll go on with clips by Kai Hillebrand, Jost Arens and Lem Villemin. Make sure to enter your submissions:

In order to enter, all you need to do is film three tricks – either in a line or three single tricks in a clip – and upload the video to your Instagram account, using #3stripes3tricks while also tagging @placemag and @adidasskateboarding. That’s it – all entries get the chance to win amazing prices. We’ll choose three winners and repost your videos on the PLACE Instagram channel.

And there’s more: the winning footage will also take part in the Big Final Edit featuring the German adidas team with riders like Sandro Trovato, Lem Villemin, Patrick Zentgraf, Kai Hillebrand, and more. Last but not least, all three winners will receive a big adidas surprise stuff package delivered straight to their front door. Whether it’s stripes or tricks – three is the magic number and we hope to see your footage soon. Good luck!

The brandnew PLACE issue 53 will be available through skateshops, selected retailers, newsstands and of course at the Bright Tradeshow this week. Having an anonymous skater on the front-page is new to us and maybe in general a more unusual thing, rationally speaking. The titel “It could have been you” takes the anonymity and rather indicates each and every one one of us – one more of the other less. Take the time, enjoy the read and let the sunshine in:

MORE about our new Issue.