Have you become more confident as a skater after being given the title Remz pro?

I dont know, if I gained more confidence as a skater but it showed me I did something right the passed years and i reached something I only woud have dreamed of a couple of years ago!

What got you into rollerblading?

Maybe it was destiny, but looking back i think it was a nescesary development in my life. I started skiing when i was 3 years old and from the beginnig i had this obsession with jumping over ramps, the problem was I lived very far away from the mountains so I just came to ski once a year. During the same time there was this group of skateboarders living on my street with a self built jumpramp. One of the first things I ever saw, that had something to do with skating, was one of those guys jumping over a car and breaking both of his legs.

When I got a little bit older I started skateboarding by myself, which was the perfect sport for me, because I always hated the idea of having a trainer and could not get myself into something that’s not possible to do whenever and whereever i wanted. I kept on skateboarding for around 5 or 6 years until i saw the first rollerbladers in my local skatepark, in the beginning I didn’t really liked it and I thought it looks stupid, but on the other hand it caught my attention because I saw it was more body controled than skateboarding. In the end I decided to get myself a pair for christmas. I remember that I never felt as free as the first time on rollerblades in a skatepark, I had the feeling I could do whatever I want on rollerblades, skateboards were always to huge for me, so it was hard to control for me and looking on pictures from that time a skateboard next to me looks more like a surfboard.

Do you have a routine in your daily life? What is the basic outline of it? What is more important, to follow your routine or act on an impulse?

Yeah I kind of have a routine, i study photographie at the moment so I go to school most of the weekdays, but luckily my studies mean alot of practical working which isn’t only going out and taking pictures, it’s also alot of organising stuff and working in the darkroom. So I have 2 days in the week off to do this kind of stuff and I can do my own time management. Actually I hate to have routine especially when you dont recognize it as a routine anymore and live everyday the same, but sometimes a routine in little things can help to get shit done in your life. I think the same goes for acting on a impulse, the turn out of that can be really bad, but it helps to keep your life interesting.

Why do you love skating ditches, bank spots, natural launches, etc.? Did you grow up skating a lot of skatepark? Do you prefer skating this kind of obstacle over handrails or ledges, why?

Yeah as a kid I skated alot of park and there was a time I mostly skatet vert.
I think it has something to do with the way I skate, I love to roll around, be fast and skate lines. When i go out to skate street I am looking for spots that can give this kind of stuff to me. When I was younger I always tried to find the most perfect handrail ever, but I never found it and got tired of it. Thereby I opend my eyes and discovered there is so much more to skate. Nowdays I definitely would prefer this kind of spots over handrails but I love to skate ledges.

Do you consider yourself an artist or an athlete? Why?

I consider myself an skater which is in my understanding a mixture between an artist and an athlete, but it is even more.

What is your process like for filming a section? Do you plan out each trick or do you happen to find tricks while out on sessions? Is it easier for you to plan your tricks or let them happen? Why?

Normaly I dont plan any tricks at all. When I start to film a section I feel like whatever happens happens. Of course I have spots in my mind that I want to skate, when it comes to filming in my hood, but I learnd over the years whenever I had a specific trick on a specific spot in my mind it didn’t work out at all, sometimes its because of the spot or I had too much expectations on myself and there for too much pressure .
During the last sections I was filming there weren’t to0 many sessions, most times it was just me and a videographer with the aim to get some clips. This can be pressure as well but it helps you to stay focused on what you are doing. It doesnt mean for me not to have fun, it’s just different than have a session with friends.

What is your obsession with In-and-Out Burger? Is it true that while in the US one will find you at In-and-Out at the crack of dawn?

Ha I am just wearing my halloween costume right now!
It was just like this, the last 2 times in Cali every time I ate a burger or fastfood I felt very sick afterwards even if it tasted good, everbody told me to get in-and-out burgers but for some reason it never happened. So this time one of the first things I ate was in-and-out, it tastes really good and I never felt sick after eating there. In the 2 weeks i have been to cali I almost ate there everyday sometimes twice a day. I had the feeling in-and-out is harder to find than mcdonalds for example so every time I saw one I screamed I wanna eat in-and-out so I dont have to eat at some other crapy fastfood place.

Now that you have ‘come up in the blade-game’ does rollerblading / filming sections / and competing in contests feel like an ‘adult’ responsibility? Are you ever afraid that you will passion for blading will be altered by such pressures?

No I don’t think so. I have been skating in competions more than 13 years right now and even competing isn’t the most fun in the world I always kind of enjoy it, but thats more because of the whole thing around the competition itself. I dont make a living out of skating so i dont have to skate when I dont want to so there is no responsibility at all.
I have been to a point( many times) where I felt I need to skate just for myself , no filming, no competitions, just have a good time with friends. I took my time and came out with more energy. I dont know about the future but until now I could do that and it works out perfectly.

How come Billy Bell punched you in the face at the Las Vegas WRS?

Take two words,two really drunk guys with a different opinion of how to act and how to react and throw them on the middle of the strip. Than you have b.bell punching me in the face, so fuck you b.bell.
Na just joking… cheers dude. In the end it’s just another fucked up ‘dominik was drunk’ story.

You have a simple style. From my perspective you stick to a specific set of grinds and air tricks and do not vary this as much as some skaters do. This gives you a memorable style. Do you agree? With so many other bladers showing off a seemingly endless trick vocabulary what makes you keep it simple?

Yeah, it s just the way it is. I never planed to skate this way, but some years ago i just started to change my way of skating, or the other way around, I stopped trying to change it. Probably it had something to do with skaters I enjoyed watching the most, skaters like Brian Shima, Pat Lennen and Jon Elliot to name a few. I came up with the idea that landing a 360 soul is a nice feeling for sure but for me it s more fun just to do a backside 50/50, it’s like to take the essence of the tricks and enjoying it to the fullest. I hate complicated things, so why should do the thing, I love the most, in a complicated way?

Do the people around you that don’t blade know that you are a pro rollerblader? Do you feel the desire to tell them? why?

Some people know and some don’t. In the beginning I never tell anything about it, I only say I am a rollerblader and thats it. If people show more interest in it I tell them more about it, but it s always hard to explain to somebody who doesn’t know anything about it, especally because I can be a very shy person and I am good at making myself smaller than I am. Sometimes it feels like talking about very personal things, which it actually is, when I try to explain what I do on rollerblades and where it took me. The funny thing is alot of people never really understand it or better to say they just don’t get it because when they see me they just cant believe what I am able to do until they see the first video of me.

Does your being German make you a fan of Nietzsche? When did you first hear the phrase ‘God is Dead’. Does that mean anything to you?

Hehe no unfortunately I never educated myself in philosophie, maybe I should!
I never read something of him so i can’t even really say if I am a fan or not. I am not sure I think I read this phrase as a book title, but it doesnt mean anything to me. I don’t believe in god or any other religion, all I can say to this if god ever existed he is dead for sure.

Shout outs? in Conclusions? passing words?
I just give some shout outs.
First of all I wanna thank you for this interview, High5 to the whole santee crew with a special thanks to nick and rob, cheers to Mark Wojda, CJ, Jacob, Connor, Chris Edwards and B.Bell it was a crazy time to hang out with you guys! And a cheers to everybody I met in cali! I have to give some more special thanks to Kato and his family,
thanks to everybody who is supporting me, people like Mike Bayer and Stuff from be-mag, Leo and Jochen, so support my supporters remz, ignition skateshop, 4×4, groundcontrol, vicious and ucon
thanks to Sascha Krautz and Felix Strosetzki for the photos and a last cheers to all my boys from Berlin!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Blade Ripping, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.