Steve Shearer December 9, 2008

Lets be clear right from the start: this remarkable film stands as testament to the continuing track laid by Derek Hynd.

To be more specific, Hynd once again poses the question which seems almost sacrosanct in this commercialised world: is there meaning to be found in surfing, art, that which transcends and elevates the human spirit?

It's easy to cast a jaundiced eye on the question, even more so as the last time Hynd laid his soul bare in Litmus, the resulting retro revolution was so quickly co-opted and turned into a marketing wet dream. Now he has enlisted a new ally, one so far outside the surf mainstream that originality cannot be denied, a form of expression where humanities highest instincts and most subtle feelings are given full rein. Classical music.

With Richard Tognetti, a classical violinist as his foil, Hynd attempts his "journey into the unknown".....Musica Surfica is the document of this experiment, conducted in the deep south, off the edge of the australian continent. As with all voyages of discovery, success or failure is not for this generation to judge. Those as yet unborn will be the arbiters of the fecundity of the venture.

So lets get to the gist of the matter: Hynd assembles a team of surfers to ride finless surfboards on King Island, whilst Tognetti lays down a similarly improvisational track on the violin, accompanied by human song. This is not the first time high art and surfing have collided, Greenough was the subject of a famous exhibition, inspired by Echoes, staged by well-known European artists in Berlin. This time the results are more accessible but to make comment on them we first need to briefly put surf art in it's current context.

With the movement of the surf industry into the artistic realm, by sponsoring artists and films, we note a homogenisation of the end results, to that which is commercially viable and corporately acceptable. No surprises there: something as potentially explosive as art, which could conceivably result in radical new ways of seeing things, needs to be carefully manicured and bought into the corporate fold. Hence the fate of the recent retro movement.

Could the same fate befall this finless movement instigated by Hynd? It's easy to imagine Hynd cackling away as he plays pied piper to the culture he both abhors and gains nourishment from. By bringing back the ancient Hawaiian art of fins-free surfing Hynd has created something so devilishly difficult he reduces masters like Tom Carroll into stumbling, bumbling kooks. Would the average herd animal, reduce himself to such an infant-like state to follow the latest trend?

While the retro movement made surfing easier, this one has made it harder, by many orders of magnitude, and thus it may be beyond the reach of the masses, especially in average crowded conditions.

It's easy to dismiss the surfing as pointless and deliberate disabilism: a perverse and clumsy disrobing of our modern achievements to satisfy an abitrary hypothesis. Yet watching closely, there is great mastery and glide in some of the rides. Riding a mat for the first time last week, I discovered the feeling first hand, a sudden frictionless explosion of speed, a "letting go" as the craft responds to the changing curve of the wave. The riders input becomes reduced in importance compared to modern surfing. Edge control sans fins becomes more nuanced, and drag free transitions allow a giddy kind of trim, a control-less state of grace.

Some of Hynd's rides are truly spectacular, especially on shorter equipment, blurring the lines between genres. In his grace there is something of the whisper and shy vigilance of solitude. And while my ignorance of classical music is profound the emotional resonance and skill of Tognetti and his accompanying player is experienced viscerally.

Musica Surfica, more than any other film, draws a clear line in the sand and defines an area of aristocratic endeavour in our culture. Most will stand outside, full of scorn and distrust. It will be written off and generally misunderstood by the mainstream. For others it will seem not a document of the zeitgeist but a new map. A map whose outline remains hazy and whose contours, interior secrets and hidden veins of ore remain as yet undiscovered. This film belongs in the pantheon containing Morning of the Earth and Litmus as essential documents of the Australian surfing experience.

Let us hope that we are not the last to recognise this fact.

Musica Surfica can be bought online at: GreatSouthernCommunications.com.au