Clean Surf
sponsored by:


Garbage Island 
Thursday 12th. June
19:30 H
Aquarium Donostia
(click for map)


Lauren Cinamon, VBS.tv

VBS.tv is VICE free magazine’s online television channel. They started out as a norm breaking free magazine and they have turned into an editorial group that attracts a wide “young” audience around the world.  Their audiovisual proposal is very different to many of the topics in their printed magazine. They intend to produce information with a rigorous background and a very fresh and human approach at the same time, to be able to reach an heterogeneous and very contemporary public, and they’re achieving it. This documentary film, included within their TOXIC series, is a clear example of this narrative style.

For years we’ve been reading about a patch of garbage the size of Texas floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, ingeniously dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Basically, any trash that gets dumped in the water rides the currents to this one spot and joins an ever-increasing flotilla of crap. For all the breathless accounts of the mess and its impact on the area’s sealife, however, no one seemed to have a picture of the buildup.

In order to sate our own curiosity, VBS joined the crew of a research vessel studying the trash and sailed out into one of the most remote spots of open water in the world, the North Pacific Gyre, in search of this mythical garbage island. What we discovered once we got there was an ecological disaster beyond any of our expectations and possibly the single worst thing human beings have done to the planet and ourselves. We hope you have an interest in cancer and sex change!



Fombol et les Waveriders
Fred Compagnon, Francia 2008
Dur: 4 min.


Miniwaves, martians, surf, but… what is this!!!

Guest venue:
Smiling Surfing Verde

The Green project is born due to the increasing concern about environmental issues within the Smiling Surfing Collective
 A project that will open us the doors of a field that is new for us, different to the activities in which we are involved in India. With the “Green” project, we intend to make people aware of environment and our coastline, and to offer the opportunity to take part in the actions we’ll be putting into practice. Our aims in this new project go in different directions:

-Water pollution. We’ll analyze –as far as our possibilities allow us- the dark spots in our coastline with highly polluted water, where waves are being surfed and we’ll asses the consequences these could have in us surfers.

- Destruction of the coastline. These days, where corruption around the building industry is the norm, we’ll be visiting some of the spots in the Iberian Peninsula where human hands have most severely harmed the coastline, an d we will show why and how these actions have an impact on environment. Within this area, we’ll be putting into practice actions regarding the protection of waves, collaborating and supporting other groups working for the same objective.

- Cleaning. We’ll be organizing cleaning days at key spots of the coastline where population is higher, and we’ll focus on specific moments such as big swells, to implement our actions. The idea behind this project is to make several trips along the peninsula, where besides gathering information about the existing problems, we’ll surf the areas affected by human activity.

We’ll travel with professional photographers who will document everything we do, and we’ll be spreading images along with texts summing up the conclusions we take through the surfing specialized media. It’ll include the opinion of experts in different fields , most of all with the aim of making people aware of these problems.
Each one of our surfing trips will have invited surfers coming along. Pros, young guns, longboarders and even surf legends who will collaborate to come up with an attractive photo potfolio.