Place Presents: Louis Deschamps - RABAT 1994

My dear Hugo and I wanted to make new skate friends. We were dreaming about a new way of skating, freer, happier, and more Duchamp-like (You know, the French artist who used to play chess at the toilet). Suddenly we ran into a video by the Mortensen brothers on Youtube. We recognized ourselves in their purity and fun. I wish I had shot their videos. And that’s how it began, a video love-letter between our two couples. It was super hot like Beauvoir writing to Sartre.

So that is how we found our two lead skaters for the video. We needed to build a skate team so I took my phone and called my partners in crime: Harpi was scratching his balls: Easy to convince. Jawad was working as an art director near a swimming pool close to Los Angeles, he said « fuck it, I quit! » When we arrived in Rabat, Patrick and his Jeep were there to pick us up. He is living in Morroco working on a scientific type of study and enjoying his free time. We discovered an amazing city, a lot of palm trees, fancy people, and on the other hand, street kids and a lot of poverty. The Rabat skate scene is quite amazing: Real Thrashers! We were here to skate too but a load of shit happened to us: the Mortensen's got hurt early on the journey. They also puked their Swedish guts out. The French were having their typical phone arguments with their girlfriends. Harpi and Alexi began a fake shoe scam company and forgot to skate. And then we discovered surfing! You should definitely try it!

Film, Edit & Text by Louis Deschamps.

Photo by Alexis Jamet.

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place.tv/rabat1994

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