Mike Mag’s Curved Universe

Our Brazilian boy Mike Mag has kept busy travelling all over Brazil & South America, hunting for curvy spots of all kind for a new sensual project: Curved Universe. We are happy to host & introduce Mike’s vision straight out of his twisted latin mind.

Leo asked Mike a few questions on the ins and outs of skating rocks and trees in the jungle, and generally what on earth is happening with Mr Mag in general and this new part specifically.

Leo Valls: What’s up Mike, hope all is well. For those who don’t know you, can you introduce yourself and tell us where you’re from and where you live.

Mike: Yo Leo tudo beleza?  My name is Michael Magalhães, its a hard name to pronounce if you don’t speak Portuguese; growing up my friends, teachers, and contest announcers would shorten my name to Mike Mag to make it easier and it kinda stuck. I grew up and started skating in Florida, USA. My family is from Brazil so we were always bouncing between Rio de Janeiro and Palm Beach. I’d spend summer and winter vacations running around with my cousins in Rio and the rest of my time in America for school running around with my friends there. Today I live in Rio de Janeiro but travel when I can to go on skate trips and I always go back to Florida once a year.

Leo: You’ve been on Magenta for a few years already. Can you explain how it all happened?

Mike: It’s kind of a crazy story.  I had always wanted to skate for Magenta and my friend Wolfgang (of 86’d Magazine) knew that. In 2019 I was living in Long Beach with my girlfriend at the time when Wolfgang invites me on a session with Leo Valls in Los Angeles. I quit my job to go skating that very moment. It was impulsive but something in my gut told me to do it. We all went skating, I got to meet Leo, we became friends and had a really fun day of skating that day, what more could you ask for. But that was it.  A few weeks later right at the jump of 2020, me and that girlfriend broke up, and it was a brutal one. I won’t go into detail but if you’ve seen « Silver Lining’s Playbook”, something like that. I was really depressed about it and everyone knew it. My friends would force me to come skating with them to keep me out of the blues (shoutout to the homies for that). After a month or two of that my parents decided to send me back to Rio to spend Carnaval with my cousins (Carnaval is the Brazilian cure for heartbreak). This is when I started filming with Cayo Uchôa around Rio. All those heartbroken sessions resulted in a lot of clips and great skating. My friend Mikey Glover (maker of the Florida Daze videos) helped me put all the clips together for a video part. The resulting video was “End of the World” (2020) which released right at the jump of the global pandemic. We made DVDs and sent them around to friends and shops and the resulting part got posted on Free Skate Mag. Most people think the name of that video is a nod to the pandemic, but we had chosen that name months before that was a thing. The video was named “End of the World” because it is a look back on my journey through heartbreak, and being dramatic it was the end of the world for me. Or so I thought. When you really want something the whole universe conspires to help you get it. I mailed a DVD of the video to Soy Panday in Paris. Soy got into contact with me, Magenta had just gotten distribution in Brazil and he wanted to flow me some boards to skate. I rode the Brazilian flow wave for a year or two with Sergio Santoro before Leo Valls came to Rio to film for the “Monstro do Rio” video. I got to meet and skate with Leo for the second time of my life, a lot had happened and changed for me since we last met, but the vibe on the sessions was the same, nothing but fun. Shortly after that Vivien and Leo called me and Sergio to come to France, meet and skate with the team, and maybe get a clip for their new project “Just Cruise 2”. I think they wanted to meet the Brazilians to feel us out, see if we are cool in real life, see if we vibe with the team, and if we really can skate. That kind of thing. That introduction trip went super well, me and Sergio filmed a whole part for the video, and we were on. 

Leo: Your new part, « Curved universe », is the follow up of your video series. What brought you to this new project?

It’s not a series, it’s a saga. Haha. Jokes aside, yes this is the fifth video part we have done.  After “End of the World” video, I kept filming and skating with Cayo, I would dream up an idea, theme, and concept to craft the next video part around, and we would set out on our adventures to film them. We did “Burden of Dreams” all filmed in Amazonia, then “The Saudade Express” an adventure by train, next “Own Little World” with the theatre in a box, which finally lead us here to “Curved Universe”.  It takes a village to film one of these video parts, we meet, skate, and film with a bunch of friends everywhere we go. Everything we film is always VX1000 (by circumstance and by choice) we pass the camera around to whoever is not skating to film an angle, and our shooting style is run and gun. In the spirit of guerrilla cinema we make the most with what very little we have.

Why everything curved or rounded?

The idea behind this part was for me to purely only skate spots with the forms that truly attract me the most.  The curve.  No 90 degree angles, no straight lines, only curves and organic shapes. Inspired by a quote by the great Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, we set off looking for curvy spots to skate, but what we were able to find was very little. It wasn’t until a skate trip to Florianópolis the island of magic where I met my friend Victor Süssekind who showed me that what I was looking for could best be found in the hands of Mother Nature. We started searching for rocks, trees, mountains, and waterfalls to skate. A day out skating became long hikes up mountains and across rivers with our boards in hand and camera bags on our backs in hopes we got lucky and found a skateable spot in the wild. This video part turned into a big adventure into nature, and the further we went the more wild things got. 

At the Connect festival, in October in Bordeaux, we got the chance to premiere this new part and you gave a public talk on territorial identity through skateboarding and how your background influences your skating. Your presentation was very deep. Can you tell us why this topic matters? 

My skating is a reflection of who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and what I know.  I’ve been told that people can tell I’m Brazilian by the way I skate, and can tell I’m American by the way I speak. I try to blend what I’ve learned from the friends I grew up skating with in America with what I’ve learned from skating with my friends in Brazil. I’m able to pull from these two worlds of mine to craft my universe, and my identity.  It wasn’t until I started to show all these colors of my identity more proudly that I began to get more shine.  Our identity is an ever changing and always evolving thing, a beautiful thing, and what’s beautiful is to show.  Video parts are the best opportunity to show the world who you are, what you like, and give a look into our little worlds.

You also premiered the film at the Vladimir film festival, in Croatia, and in Brazil. How did it go?

I was lucky enough to get to do a bit of a world tour of premieres with this video. The first premiere was the hometown premiere in Rio for the family and friends hosted by Mauacaba Skate Coffee.  From there we went back to the island of magic, Florianópolis, to do a premiere hosted by my friends at Cinétrinda.  The next premiere was Vladimir Film Festival, this was the big one, the big skate film festival in Fazana Croatia. They screened the video on Sunday on Brijuni Island in Tito’s Cinema. It was the most epic and beautiful cinema I had ever seen, so many people came out for that one, I loved watching the light of the video projection reflecting off the faces of the hundreds of spectators. It was the best day of my life. After that it was off to Bordeaux to do a premiere at the Connect Festival as well as give a talk about identity in skateboarding. To cap it all off my good friend Murilo Romão did a premiere in São Paulo at the first edition of his Below Skate Video Festival. I’m very honored and lucky to have so many great friends all over the world who are so passionate about skating like me.

What’s coming for Mike Mag?

The plan is the same as it’s always been. Try to be a better skater (and human) than I was yesterday.  My life is dedicated to skateboarding and its adventures. It’s only a matter of time before I dream up the next idea for a video, get excited, and set off again. I use skateboarding as a tool to explore, discover, and understand the world as well as myself. I don’t know what tomorrow holds for me, I don’t have my shit all together, but I am following my personal legend, my heart has taken the wheel, and I’m along for the ride.